A VISIT TO AMERICA

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A VISIT TO AMERICA

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

NXW YORK - BOSTON . CHICAGO . DALLAS
ATLANTA - BAN FBANCISCO

MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED

LONDON - BOMBAY CALCUTTA
MBLBOTJBNK

THE M:ACMILLAN COMPANY

OF CANADA, LIMITED

TOBONTO

A VISIT TO AMERICA

By
A. G. MACDONELL

New York

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1935

Copyright, 1935, by
A. G. MACDONELL.

All rights reserved no part of this book may be
reproduced in any form without permission in writing
from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes
to quote brief passages in connection with a review
written for inclusion in magazine or newspaper.

Set up and printed,
Published October, 1935.

SET UP BY BROWN BROTHERS LINOTYPERS

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

BY THE FERRIS PRINTING COMPANY

TO

MY FRIENDS,

GEORGE BRETT JUNIOR, HOYT PERRY, AND
RUSS MACDONALD,

ALL OF NEW YORK CITY, WITHOUT WHOSE TIRELESS ENERGY,

UNFAILING KINDNESS, AND UNSTINTED HELP, THIS VISIT WOULD

HAVE BEEN BUT A SHADOW OF ITSELF.

"What is this you bring my America?.
Is it not something that has been better told
or done before?"

WALT WHITMAN.

A VISIT TO AMERICA

CHAPTER ONE

Approaching Manhattan up by the long-stretching island."

WALT WHITMAN.

THE voyage was uneventful. My main impressions of
it were the width of the Atlantic, which I had never
before crossed, the number of references made by my
fellow passengers to the salutary effect of sea-air upon
the human constitution, and the benevolent expression
upon the face of President Harding, whose portrait
presided, like a Patron Saint, over most of our activ
ities. It is true, now that I come to look back upon it,
that few, if any, Americans on the ship referred to Mr.
Harding in conversation as a Saint, or seemed at all
pleased to be sailing under his Patronage. But perhaps
they were political opponents, and therefore biased
against the good man. At any rate they were unani
mous, for some reason which I could not fathom, in
the opinion that no ship connected in any way with
President Harding was likely to run out of oil

On the morning of the seventh day the first incident
occurred since the evening at Cobh (nee Queens-
town), when dainty Irish colleens had tried to sell us
genuine hand-made peasant lace from Manchester,
and broths of boys had offered us unique bargains

2 A VISIT TO AMERICA

(mass-produced) in shillelaghs. We saw land. Long
Island appeared on the horizon.

A few hours later we arrived at Quarantine and
halted for the Medical Examination. It was a long
business, but it incommoded us not a whit. For the
Hygienic Theory of the United States appears to be
based on a remarkable notion. Anyone who can afford
to buy a first-class ticket is automatically presumed to
be free from all contagious infection. A doctor com
ing from a campaign against bubonic plague in
Turkey, a medical missionary from the yellow fever
districts of Central Africa, an explorer from the typhus-
infested villages of Turkestan, all these are exempt
from medical inspection if they have taken the precau
tion of travelling first class. But let a man be as free
from germs as an iceberg, and let him scrub himself
in antiseptics three times a day, and let him travel in
the steerage class, and by Heavens! he will learn that
Quarantine is no idle word.

For at least an hour we leant in a superior manner
on the rail, while our poorer fellow passengers were
presumed to be suffering from the deadliest and most
baffling diseases known to, or unknown by, medical
science, and as we leant we affirmed and re-affirmed
and stated frankly and repeated with the utmost em
phasis at our command, to each and all our charming
American friends on board, that the Skyline of Man
hattan not only came up to, but far exceeded our wild
est, our most hallucinatory we groped frantically for
bigger, taller words expectations.

A VISIT TO AMERICA 3

As the liner steamed slowly up the Hudson, the
stream of expert pointers-out grew thicker and thicker,
and better and better informed. "The one on the left,
Mr. Macdonell, is the Woolworth Building; next to it
is the Chrysler Building, and beyond the Chrysler is
the Empire State. But the building which you can t
see is Number One, Broadway, the office of the Stand
ard Oil Company. *

After I had duly pigeonholed this information, the
next one would reverse the order of the buildings, and
add that I couldn t see Number One, Broadway, the
office of the Cunard Company, and then a third would
substitute the R.C.A. for Woolworth, and the Irving
Trust for the Empire State, and add that Number
One, Broadway, was the office of Messrs, J. P. Morgan.
But all were agreed on one point, the invisibility of
that mysterious building. I never discovered whether
they were right or not, but I should imagine that they
were not.

As we advanced closer and closer, the effect of the
Skyline was somewhat counter-balanced by the sink
ing feeling induced by the nearness of the Customs
Examination. In Europe we hear more about the hor
rors of the latter even than about the magnificence of
the former. Indeed, we have long grown accustomed
to travellers tales in our Club of the brutal Irish In
spectors who, as soon as they hear an English accent
on the Quay, either scatter white waistcoats in the dust
what time they mutter "Robert Emmet . . , Wolfe
Tone . . . Charles Stewart Parnell," in a savage un-

4 A VISIT TO AMERICA

dertone, and fling shirts and ties about to the tune of
the "Shan Van Voght," or else stand for hours in a
trance, murmuring verses from Yeats "The Countess
Cathleen," and refusing to undertake so mundane a
task as the inspection of the baggage.

But it appears either that things have changed since
our fellow Clubmen crossed the Atlantic under sail,
or else that they are confusing their recollections of
the New York Customs with those of the spirited
scenes at the capture of the Lahore Gate at Delhi,
during the Indian Mutiny of 1857. However that may
be, I landed with some nervousness, for the Quay was
very dusty and I knew that my evening waistcoats
were very white. But within half an hour I had been
passed through with perfect politeness and total absence
of fuss.

A friend met me, threw me into a taxi, and within
forty minutes of setting foot on American soil, I was
at my first party.

I had been assured that it would only be a small
party, so that I should not be unduly confused at meet
ing too many total strangers all at once, and I was all
the more grateful for this kindly consideration when I
was shot out of the taxi into the middle of a mere two
hundred people, of whom one hundred and ninety-
seven were total strangers. Each one of them asked me
how long I had been in America, and to each I replied,
forty-five minutes, forty-six and a half minutes, forty-
nine minutes, and so on, as time went on and my visit
lasted longer and longer. At about eight P.M., when I

A VISIT TO AMERICA 5

had shaken hands with about a hundred and fifty
people, I began to feel more grateful than ever that it
was only a small party. Luckily for me it turned out
to be not only a small party but an early one. About
thirty of us went on to dinner at the Plaza Hotel and
after a few hours dancing I got home to my hotel at
about four A.M.

Next morning I awoke at about eight o clock and
began to revolve plans for sight-seeing. It was clear
that the first week or two in such a staggering colossus
of a place as New York ought to be spent very slowly.
It is the sign of an inexperienced traveller to race
round from sight to sight, guide-book in one hand and
pencil in the other, pockets bulging with note-books
and picture postcards, and with each hour of the day
mapped out by stop-watch. The only way to absorb
any sort of atmosphere is to loaf round in a very
leisurely fashion, or, better still, to sit down and wait
for the atmosphere to come for absorption. I decided,
therefore, to lie in bed every morning until about 9.30
studying the daily newspapers, and to sally out for a
gentle stroll at about eleven. Luncheon would occupy
the hours between one and three P.M., and for the rest
of the day a bench in Central Park, or perhaps in Bat
tery Park, would provide an admirable base for observa
tion, reflection, and the general absorption of atmos
phere.

This plan of campaign having been sketched out,

6 A VISIT TO AMERICA

and the hour being by now 8.30 A.M., I was about to go
to sleep again when my bedside telephone rang, and
from that instant until I steamed out of New York
Harbour several months later, I do not suppose that I
had an aggregate period of leisure of more than one
hour and forty minutes altogether. The nearest I ever
got to a bench in Central Park was on a morning in
December when I ran madly across the Park to a
luncheon engagement which I had endeavoured to
keep in East Eighty-first Street when I ought to have
been keeping it in West Eighty-first Street; and I once
had three minutes in Battery Park between two ap
pointments. As for gentle strolls, I managed to bring
off about half a dozen all told, but as they were usually
on the way back from parties at about six A.M. I was
seldom in a state of sufficient mental alertness to take
notes or to jot down impressions.

From the moment that my telephone-bell rang on
that first morning, I was caught up in the whizzing,
whirling, skyrocketing, Rush of life in New York.
There was never time for anything except a frantic
leap into a taxi, and a furious drive to the next engage
ment. Sometimes when traffic was busy and I was in
an exceptionally violent hurry, I used to run from en
gagement to engagement in order to arrive more
quickly than was possible by taxi, and I used to notice
that out of the crowds of pedestrians through whom I
dodged and side-stepped, about fifteen per cent were
also running and eighty-five per cent were walking as
quickly as they could. Everyone was caught up in the

A VISIT TO AMERICA 7

Rush. At first I was enormously impressed by the
scurrying masses and their zeal to be at something or
other, and it was not until much later that I began to
discover one or two peculiar features of the New
Yorker s haste to transport himself, whether horizon
tally or vertically, from one spot to another.

For instance, after accompanying many charming
New York friends in swift dashes hither and thither
through their city, I began to notice that the moment
they reached their destination all the hurry stopped.
They would save three minutes on the journey and
then waste twenty in doing nothing in particular. One
of the favourite topics of conversation, especially Down
town, is the prime necessity of getting down to busi
ness at once because of the incredibly short length of
time at the disposal of the conversationalists. Taxis and
legs save minutes that minds do not seem to know
what to do with. Even on that very first morning I
ought to have suspected something of this, for the man
who telephoned to me at the ungodly hour of 8.30
devoted the first fourteen minutes of his call to explan
ations of, and apologies for, his inability to call me up
any later in the day. He was too busy, he said. And
naturally I was too civil to point out that he would have
got the same ^telephonic results, achieved the same
volume of business, saved several dimes on his telephone
account, and allowed me another fourteen minutes
rest, if he had called up at 8,44* In any case I doubt
if he would have believed me. It takes unpractical
literary folk to see things like that.

8 A VISIT TO AMERICA

The stock explanation of this perpetual physical ac
tivity of the New Yorker is, of course, the Air, which
is generally conceded to be just like champagne by a
nation that probably knows less about champagne,
owing to long years of inexperience, than almost any
other nation in the world. But if that be the true ex
planation surely the Air ought to stimulate him to per
petual mental activity as well. However, that is a
speculation that not only is outside the scope of this
work, but is verging on dangerous ground.

After the first fourteen minutes of that telephone-
call, my business-friend came down to the matter in
hand, and by nine o clock, or it may have been a few
minutes after, had invited me to a party and I had
gratefully accepted.

The telephone rang fairly continuously all morning,
and during the next four days I went to sixteen cock
tail parties, four dinner parties, four supper parties, and
four dances. On the fifth day I went to bed.

But cocktail parties were not the only form of hos
pitality into which I was thrown. There was, for in
stance, the Business-man s luncheon. This is a most
impressive function. It begins, as a rule, sharp at one
P.M. It concludes sharp at two P.M. Nothing is drunk
except iced water and coffee, and when it is over the
iron-jawed hustlers return to their offices and telephone
to San Francisco or New Orleans or somewhere,
It is an amazing contrast to the corresponding en
tertainment in England which begins about 12.45,
and goes on till about three, to the somnolent accom-

A VISIT TO AMERICA 9

paniment of sherry, tankards of beer, and liqueur
brandies.

But although during those first weeks of wild helter-
skelter it was very difficult to form any sort of impres
sion about New York, its flora and fauna for it was
only rarely that I was allowed to rise to the surface
for a moment s breath before being ruthlessly sub
merged by another flood of kindness nevertheless I did
manage to pick up some useful bits of learning. One
thing, for example, I learnt, and that was the injustice
that is done to visiting British authors by the people of
New York. At every party I went to, at least six people
said to me, "Why do British authors come over here for
a fortnight and then go home and write an unkind
book about us?"

At first I could make no reply except a giggle or
some sort of strangled noise of deprecation and
apology at the back of my throat. After all it is not an
easy question to answer until you know the truth and
then it becomes perfectly simple. This is the truth.
British authors visit the United States with the full in
tention of staying five or six months, of studying socio
logical, political, industrial, and economic conditions,
of talking earnestly to men and women in all walks of
life, of visiting every State in the Union, and, in fact,
of making a real job of it. Then, their investigations
completed, their note-books bulging with notes, and
their memories with impressions, they propose to re
turn to Europe and compile a book that shall be a
classic of sympathetic comment and impartial analysis*

10 A VISIT TO AMERICA

That is their intention, and not even the most bigoted
adherent of the international theories of Big Bill
Thompson could find fault with it. But what happens ?
The author comes bowling ashore at the Cunnrd quay,
full of robust health, with clear eye and upright car
riage. Three weeks later he sneaks back on board,
trembling, bloodshot, jumping at the slightest sound,
rapidly graying round the temples and thinning on top,
peering furtively about him, hoarse, terrified. He is
suffering from lack of sleep, incipient delirium
tremens, loss of appetite, surfeit of oysters, gout, and
cirrhosis of the liver. On the voyage home he stays
locked in his cabin for fear that his so-called friends in
New York may have acquaintances on the ship to
whom they may have recommended him for enter
tainment. He tries to avert the delirium tremens by
abjuring all alcohol on tine voyage, and arrives home
in a fearful rage induced by stuffy air in the cabin,
liver, lack of exercise, and the sudden cutting-oflt of
stimulant. In a blind fury he sits down at his desk and
writes 70,000 words of pure poison about the authors
of his malaise. Thus have the kindly citizens of the
United States defeated their own object. Intent upon
giving a merry time to a stranger, and thereby giving
him also a good impression of themselves, they reduce
him from a well-intentioned Innocent Abroad to a
surly and cantankerous wreck, and then are pained and
surprised when the resulting travel-book arrives, siz
zling with sulphur and brimstone, from the printing-
presses.

A VISIT TO AMERICA II

Another discovery I made during this wild round of
gaiety was the list of subjects on which Americans do
not like being laughed at, however gentle and good-
humoured the laughter. It is a list which every stranger
in a strange land has to compile at the earliest possible
moment if he is to avoid giving offence and being
ignominiously kicked out, and it is a list which every
country possesses. The French have the shortest, and
at the same time the largest. It consists of one word,
France. The English, as I have pointed out elsewhere,
have two patches of consecrated ground, the Team-
Spirit at Cricket, and Admiral Lord Nelson. The Ita
lians, on the contrary, have a list as long as your arm,
ranging from ice-cream to Caporetto. In America, at
any rate north of the Mason and Dixon Line, there is
only one real Taboo for the foreigner and, strangely
enough, it is one of the things that Americans them
selves take a painful, an almost morbid, pleasure in
talking about. But the foreigner must keep off it. He
may laugh at his hosts for anything else in the world
and they, being happy and good-natured people, will
laugh gaily with him but on this subject, alone of all
subjects, he must preserve the most incommunicable
of silences, not only of word and of laughter, but also
of gesture whether of hand, shoulder, or eyebrow.
Otherwise he will be utterly damned to all eternity,
and will miss all the loveliness, all the strangeness, all
the fantastic surprises, of this lovely, strange, fantastic,
and surprising continent

Even now, writing in the safe security of England,

12 A VISIT TO AMERICA

behind the yawning guns of the Royal British Navy,
three thousand miles from New York City, I am nerv
ously diffident of even writing down the fearful secret.
Wild horses, those legendary draggers of secrets, would
not drag it from me in plain word of mouth. If is quite
dangerous enough to commit it to paper.

But the truth of the matter is, and I record it with
misgiving, reluctance, and a sense of imminent ca
lamity, that the American does not like strangers to say
that America is a new country. He himself will say it, over
and over again but it is as much as your life is
worth to say it yourself. It is risky even to agree with
him when he says it. In fact, it is safer either to say
nothing at all in answer to him, or to confine yourself
to a muttered reference to Thorfinn Karlsefne or Leif
Ericsson.

It is a peculiar business, the American attitude to
Antiquity. Of all the citizens of the world there is
none so alive as the American to the value of moder
nity, so fertile in experiment, so feverish in the search
for something new. There is nothing from Architec
ture to Contract Bridge, from the Immortality of the
Soul to the Ventilation of Railroad-Cars, from Golf to
God, that he does not pounce upon and examine criti
cally to see if it cannot be improved* And then, having
pulled it to pieces, mastered its fundamental theory,
and re-assembled it in a novel and efficient design, he
laments bitterly because it is not old. The one great
quality which America has brought to civilization, is
die very quality that Americans wring their hands

A VISIT TO AMERICA 13

over. Scotland does not admit the superiority of Eng
land because the clans were barbarous cattle-thieves
when Alcuin was Archbishop of York and the friend
of Charlemagne, nor do the English regard themselves
as a lower order of humanity than the Italians because
the English were facing the rigours of their climate in
a coating of woad when Virgil was riding with Horace
down the Appian Way. But the American has got this
notion into his head and nothing will expel it, and he
takes a morbid delight in trotting it out in public and
wringing his hands over it. He has created a bogey
and is cowed by it. But woe betide the foreigner who
so much as hints at the existence of the bogey.

A perfect example of this American indecision
^whether to worship a thing because it is New, or to
^worship it because it is Old, is to be found in the town-
planning and street-naming of New York City.
<*> It is an important boast of the citizen of Manhattan
that his streets possess the simplest, the most logical,
pthe most practical system of identification in the world,
jfhe avenues run north and south and are numbered
rr^rom one to thirteen; the streets run east and west and
^are numbered from one to a million as the case may
be. The corners are all right angles, the intervals be
tween the streets identical. Therefore, cries the New
Yorker raising his voice a little in order to be audible
above the sound of a passing elevated train, a simple cal
culation gives you the exact distance which has to be
traversed on any journey between two known points,
and furthermore the mere mention of an address at

14 A VISIT TO AMERICA

once establishes the exact position of that particular
spot on the island. Complicated explanations are un
necessary. How much simpler than elaborate postal
districts such as plague the Londoner! How much
simpler than the arrondissements of Paris! To this cry
of triumph is often added a gentle suggestion that such
efficiency, such practical modernity, is characteristic of
the nation which long ago swept away the ridiculous
coinage of England and substituted the metric dollar.

Both claims are beautifully absurd. The American,
a sentimentalist to the core, clings passionately to the
yard, the furlong, and the mile; he sells his wheat by
the bushel and his cotton by the bale. There is no
reckoning in kilo-bales on the Carolinian plantations,
or kilo-bushels on the long plains of Nebraska. The
tough placer-miner of the Northwest reckons his
gold-dust by the ounce, and that not even the simple
ounce of his brother, the lead-miner of Missouri. Troy
weight, with its minims and pennyweights, is the
reckoning for the gold-miner in the logical new world,
as in the unpractical old.

And so it is in Manhattan, The avenues run north
and south and are numbered from one to thirteen. But
what does the poor stranger do when, leaving Third
Avenue and making for Fourth Avenue, he suddenly
finds himself in Lexington Avenue? And what hap
pens to his confidence in his bump of locality when he
strolls along Eleventh, finds himself suddenly in
Thirteenth, goes a little further in the same direction
and presto! he is in Twelfth? It is just the same with

A VISIT TO AMERICA 15

the streets. The numbers run with beautiful regularity,
and the rectangles are laid out with perfect symmetry,
down from the hundreds into the eighties and the
forties, and then suddenly Broadway appears, wander
ing in a most sloppy way at a slant across the island,
and curling about at random hither and thither in the
most unprofessional style. Affairs get worse still as we
go south. After First Street, Manhattan fairly plunges
into an orgy of sentiment. Old heroes are commemo
rated and pastoral memories revived. Here once was
the Bowling Green on which the grave burgesses un
bent for an hour in solemn dignity. There ran the
Wall, and beyond it, long ago, stood a Pine and a
Cedar. They must have been patriarchs among trees
to have resisted so bravely the iniquity of oblivion.
The Rose flowered inside the Wall, and the Mulberry,
and there was once an Orchard. There are no shep
herdesses now in Gramercy Park and it is many a year
since Greene was green, but the lovely old names are
there, each with its memory of a past that stretches
back a long while before some standardizing genius hit
upon the notion of the numbered street and the rec
tangular corner and the uniform block. That southern
end of Manhattan is a mass of history. Frankfort and
Hanover streets are surely echoes of those German mer
cenaries whom England bought and unleashed upon
her own kinsmen, Nassau and Dutch must be sur
vivals from New Amsterdam, and Bowery was once
spelt Bouwerie. In Battery Park there is the statue of
Verrazano, that bold Florentine, who came sailing up

16 A VISIT TO AMERICA

the Hudson River in 1525, the year of the Battle of
Pavia when all was lost to the Fortune of France, save
Honour and the life of King Francis. In the graveyard
of the Church of the Trinity, in Broadway opposite the
end of Wall Street is buried James Lawrence, the cap
tain of the famous frigate CAcsaptalp, and near by is
the grave of an English captain of the Ninth Regiment
of Infantry, and beyond him are the "Late Agent of
His Britannick Majesty s Packets * and William Brad
ford, printer, "born in Leicestershire in Old England
in 1660, for 50 years printer to This Government."

I spent a long time in the graveyard of the Church
of the Trinity, looking at the tombstones and trying to
decipher the inscriptions. And then it suddenly struck
me that it was a very extraordinary thing that there
should be any difficulty about deciphering the inscrip
tions. After all, here was an authentic piece of that
Antiquity which the Americans so passionately long
for. Here, in the Trinity churchyard, He men who took
part in the making of the United States. (The parish
dates from 1697.) But the stones are neglected and the
inscriptions are often almost illegible, and an atmos
phere of decay broods over the scene. It is as if a com
promise has been arranged between the rival forces of
Antiquity and Modernity. The Modern Spirit allows
the church and its burial ground to remain in the heart
of the financial district where site-values must be about
a million dollars a square inch, while in return the
Spirit of Antiquity makes the concession that the his
torical relics of America s past shall be allowed to rot
away to dust.

CHAPTER TWO

"Give me faces and streets give me those phantoms incessant and endless

along the trottoirsl
Give me interminable eyes give me women give me comrades and

lovers by the thousand 1
Let me see new ones every day let me.hold new ones by the hand every

day!
Give me such shows give me the streets of Manhattan!"

WALT WHITMAN.

IN SPITE of the Rush, and the incessant telephone-calls,
and the hospitality, it does occasionally happen to the
visitor in New York that his tireless hosts make a mis
calculation in their plans for his entertainment. Nine
times out of ten the error takes the form of providing
six parties for the same hour on the same day. The
tenth time and how rarely does it seem to come
along! they leave a whole hour unoccupied by meal,
drink, dance, or personally conducted tour. This tenth
time, this blessed blank, did happen to me once or
twice during the four or five weeks I spent in the city,
and I was able to carry out a small fraction of my ori
ginal, illusory programme and stroll at leisure through
the streets and watch the crowds hurrying past. But
although it is difficult to stroll at leisure through the
streets of New York, it is fifty times more difficult to
write about it.

l8 A VISIT TO AMERICA

But what is there to say about New York that has
not been said a thousand times before? Description
may run into volumes or may be crystallized into a
single phrase, as that great American crystallized it
when he called it Bagdad-on-the-Subway. There was
never a more perfect description of a town. Later
American wits have followed in O. Henry s path and
have called Los Angeles "Twelve Suburbs in Search of
a City," and Waco, that queer Texan town with its
single skyscraper amid the interminable ranges, "A
Totem-Pole Completely Surrounded by Baptists," but
they have never come within miles of the profundity
and wisdom of Bagdad-on-the-Subway. There you
have New York. The splendour and the luxury and
the wealth of the East live again in this city of the
West. No oriental palace could be more fantastic than
the Chrysler Building which begins as a concrete sky
scraper, develops into a specimen of loathsome fret
work in metal, and tapers off into a comic needle like
the horn of a narwhal that is suffering from elephanti
asis. Caliphs as wealthy as Harun drive about the
streets. Jewels as rare as the Timur ruby are on sale in
the bazaars.

All the world meets in the New Bagdad. In an
hour s walk you can see men of China and Japan, of
Africa and the primaeval jungle, of the Hebrews, that
ancient race, of Europe and of Siberia, of the Arctic
Circle and of the hot damp swamps of the Equator.
The caravans of the Five Continents converge on the
New Bagdad, as they used to on the old. The mer-

A VISIT TO AMERICA 19

chants and the money-lenders of the world listen to
every faint ripple of sound in the markets that cluster
where the old city wall once stood, and the story of AH
Baba and the forty thieves is exactly repeated when
two oil-kings join in the deadly combat of price-cutting
competition. One or other of them dies a financial
death when oil falls.

Mosques and minarets and cupolas are dotted over
the island that lies, as Mesopotamia lies, between the
two rivers, and the merchant-princes have scattered
over the city, with a lavish prodigality, their monu
ments to their own glory. Generally their monuments
are buildings, in which men and women may toil at
ledgers and typewriters nearer to God than ever men
and women toiled before, and sometimes they are
libraries or collections of art treasures that have been
won in many a swift invasion into older and more
effete countries.

And all the time there is the Subway, roaring, tear
ing, rattling, swiftly, noisily, dirtily, underneath the
palaces of the Latterday Caliphs. There is all the splen
dour of the East on Park Avenue, and all the squalor
of the East below the bridges in Brooklyn. For every
Bagdad palace there is a Manhattan palace and for
every Bagdad beggar there is a Manhattan beggar.
Splendour here, and poverty there. That is New York.
Step for one moment off the great thoroughfare, and
the slums are yelling round you. It is only a few yards
from the swishing stream of the great automobiles to
the howl of the elevated railway and the whine of the

20 A VISIT TO AMERICA

street-cars. Stand on one of the great thoroughfares
Broadway for instance, which shares the fame of Picca
dilly, the Champs Elysees, Unter den Linden, and the
Appian Way and watch the rich go past. Then stroll
down the street till you come to a grating in the side
walk and pause there. In a moment you will hear a
roaring sound and feel a rush of disturbed air. The
sidewalk will tremble and then the sound will die
away. That is the noise of a train in the Subway. You
have heard the poor go past. Rattling, swaying, jolting,
jammed so tightly against one another that straphang-
ing is unnecessary because it is impossible to fall, smell
ing, dirty, harassed, the poor go riding in the Subway.
Nobody cares where they go or what they do. For a
nickel the Subway is open to all. Stay there a minute
or a month nobody cares. A nickel has bought the
Freedom of Sub-New-York and you may live there or
die there, whichever you please, and no single fellow
human being will do anything more to you than jostle
you out of the way. He will not even look at you as
he jostles. He would not even look at you as he tripped
over your dead body. There are very few indicators in
the big stations to guide the inexperienced traveller to
his correct platform because nobody cares two straws
whether the inexperienced traveller gets to his correct
platform or not.

The Caliphs never see the poor. The poor would
catch a glimpse of the Caliphs if they had time to wait
for a few hours at a street-corner and could recognize
a Caliph when they saw one. But the poor are too

A VISIT TO AMERICA 21

busy, rushing hither and thither, either on their own
obscure and humble little errands which do not really
need such haste, or upon the tremendous errands of the
Caliphs themselves, and these require most peremp
torily all the haste in the world. So New Bagdad, the
real New Bagdad, never meets its own Subway. It only
vaguely knows that it exists, somewhere deep down in
the earth, out of sight, and very unimportant. For the
Latterday Caliph does not even wander the streets at
night, like Harun or Florizel, in search of the quaint,
the bizarre, the picturesque. He has read too many
stories in the newspapers (which he probably owns)
of men who went out walking and were battered with
sandbags or perforated by sub-machine-gun bullets for
their trouble.

On the first occasion when my hosts left a mysterious
gap in the schedule, I spent it, naturally, gaping up at
the skyscrapers. But this is no place to talk about sky
scrapers. They have been spoken of before. In Eng
land, they are usually described as tall but vulgar, and
sometimes as vulgar but tall, and intending travellers
are advised to have their hearts tested before ascending
to the top of the highest ones. Needless to say, like
almost all English theories about America, these ideas
are quite wrong except the idea that they are tall. One
or two of the earlier skyscrapers are over-ornamented
and ugly. But the newer ones, with their severe, clean
lines, are extraordinarily beautiful. After dark they

2# A VISIT TO AMERICA

turn Manhattan from a scramble of money-makers into
a fantastical city of magic with squares of orange light
that glow in the sky only an inch or two below Arc-
turus, and turn the dullest street into a fairy canyon,
while in the daytime the glass and the glittering con
crete, untarnished by grime in a smokeless town, make
a far more brilliant decoration than any colour in the
streets. For the streets themselves are drab in compari
son, say, with the streets of London. The London
buses, like crawling scarlet scarabs, brighten every yard
of the main roads. The private automobiles are often
sensationally painted. Telephone-boxes are gaily
tricked out, and the scarlet pillar-boxes are like round,
solid, symbols of John Bull himself. (It is one of John
Bull s gnawing miseries that his favourite colour, the
scarlet with which he splashes his streets, his stamps,
and his Empire upon the map, is the very same as the
scarlet of the Revolutionary miscreants of Moscow.)
But in New York there are few buses, except a quaint
and wobbly service of ancient green contrivances which
ply up and down Fifth Avenue, beginning in Wash
ington Square and fading away into nothingness, for
all I know into complete dissolution, in the neighbour
hood of West i5oth Street. A small town in Conne-
mara, Ireland, would turn up its nose at these veterans.
The nearest approach to them that I have ever seen was
a horse-drawn street-car in Kovno, Capital of Lithuania.
It is left to the taxi-cabs to provide the colour in the
streets of New York. The private cars (called auto
mobiles for short) are almost always darkest blue or

A VISIT TO AMERICA 23

black or a rather dull brown. It is the rarest thing in
the world to see a sensational pale green racer, or a
stately all-silver limousine. But the fleets of taxis
somewhat redeem the drabness. One fleet consists of
bright yellow cabs, each one labelled in large letters
on each side, "Yellow Taxi." This label is a remarkable
piece of thoughtfulness on the part of the owners,
for it can only be intended to enliven the dull lives of
the Colour-Blind, who would not otherwise know that
these taxis are yellow. No one can believe for a minute
that the practical American would waste so much time,
space, and good black paint in stating such an excep
tionally obvious fact, if there was not some altruistic
motive behind it. (It is a little more difficult to detect
the altruistic motive which has inspired the notice "To
the Lower Level" above a yawning abyss of descending
stairs in the Grand Central Station. However colour
blind a man is, he surely could not fail to detect that
stairs going downwards will probably lead to a place
on a lower level.)

A second fleet of taxis is painted silver and equipped
with radio loud-speakers. When I landed in New
York, it was impossible to hire a radio-taxi at all. The
reason for this was very singular. It appears that the
climax of the baseball season is a match between the
champion clubs of the two baseball Leagues. The
match consists of a series of games which is continued
until one or the other of the two teams has scored four
victories, and is called the World Series. (Why it
should be called the World Series is not very clear. So

24 A VISIT TO AMERICA

far as I know, baseball is played to any marked extent
only in the United States and in Japan, which cannot
cover as much between them as one-tenth of the surface
of the world. However, let it pass. There is that hotel
in Paris called L Hotel de 1 Univers et du Portugal,
and in London there is a journal for stamp-collectors
called "The World-wide Philatelist, with which is
incorporated The Kensington Philatelist! We are all
tarred with the same megalomaniac feather.)

The World Series on this occasion was to be played
between the Detroit Tigers and the New York Giants.
Everything was set for it. Business-men from all over
the United States discovered that the fate and fortunes
of their corporations depended upon an immediate
visit to New York. Board meetings were arranged by
the thousand in the neighbourhood of Wall Street.
The ground floors of the hotels were crammed with
middle-aged gentlemen demonstrating to one another
with umbrellas exactly how such-and-such a pitcher
could easily be dealt with, and with other middle-aged
gentlemen, demonstrating how impossible it was for
any batter to hit the devastating pitching of So-and-so.
Indeed during these wild days it was practically impos
sible to get from one side to the other of a hotel-lounge
without getting at least one crack in the eye or on the
shin bone. And then a truly fearful catastrophe oc
curred. It was to the tired business-man who had strug
gled to New York for his board-meeting, the equiv
alent of the San Francisco earthquake and the
Chicago fire. It destroyed his faith never perhaps,

A VISIT TO AMERICA 25

overwhelmingly strong in the Divine Guidance of
mortal affairs. For a young gentleman named Dizzy
Dean, assisted by his brother Daffy, scored an incred
ible number of victories for the St. Louis Cardinals by
his superb pitching, a miserable and obscure team
called the Brooklyn Dodgers defeated the New York
Giants twice in one week, and bim! The Giants were
out, and the Cardinals were in, and the World Series
was abducted from New York and deposited overnight
in Detroit and St. Louis. Dispirited bands of company
directors found that they had no alternative but to at
tend their board-meetings and then go sulkily home.
The crowds in the hotels called sadly for their checks,
declared a few dividends, or passed them as the case
may be, and returned to such places as Baltimore, Buf
falo, Cleveland and Pittsburgh.

Now at last we come to the reason why the taxi-
drivers of the Radio fleet were out of circulation during
a whole week. Each driver parked his cab at the side
of the street, lay down at full length in the back,
switched on his radio and listened to the broadcast
description of the baseball games.

Although I knew only so much about baseball as can
be learned from the newspapers and a very occasional
match between a visiting American battleship and the
"London Americans," I soon gathered that the elder
Mr. Dean has a pretty wit and a nice sense of show
manship, besides being the greatest pitcher since the
days of the great Christy Mathewson. It was his genial
habit, during the World Series, to march into the

26 A VISIT TO AMERICA

dressing-room of the Detroit Tigers and explain to
each one of his baffled and indignant opponents exactly
how he proposed to deal with them in the forthcoming
encounter. I never could quite fathom why someone
of the tigrine camp did not sock him on the jaw, but
apparently no one ever did. On the other hand Mr.
Dean s prose style was distinctly grade or two below
his pitching. This is a sample of it, and I cannot help
feeling that it runs to vigour and crisp energy rather
than to musical cadences. Asked by a reporter when a
slight injury to his head would be sufficiently healed
to allow him to pitch again. Dizzy replied: "I would
be tickled to death to pitch to-morrow s game. I think
I would have my stuff to-morrow, and probably would
shut the Detroit Tigers out, because after pitching
to-day without my stuff, and they didn t know I didn t
have my stuff, I could go out there to-morrow and shut
the boys out. I think that if they pitched me the whole
four days I would win all four of them."

Mr. Dean ultimately found his stuff and pitched the
Cardinals into victory in the final game of the Series,
and 1,498 correspondents wrote to the Evening Sun of
Baltimore enclosing a parody of Kipling on the refrain
"You re a better man than I am, Dizzy Dean." The
following week, a town in Florida called Bradenton
changed its name to Deanville.

During this part of my visit to the United States I
was greatly moved by the courtesy and tact of all those

A VISIT TO AMERICA 27

citizens who gallantly suppressed visible emotion when
I explained that a single cricket-match between Eng
land and Australia had been known to last for eight
whole days, and that spectators have, on occasion, dis
located their jaws with a yawn.

But although I missed the great baseball series, I was
in time for the football season, and at the earliest pos
sible date I went to see a football game. My knowl
edge of this pastime had, up to this period, been exclu
sively drawn from the short stories about it in the
Saturday Evening Post. The main point of the game,
so far as I could gather from these stories, was that each
College had its deadly rival College, and that at the
end of each season the star quarter-back of one team
invariably married the beautiful daughter of the hard-
faced Coach of the other. In the last paragraph the star
and the daughter fell into a sort of flying tackle, while
the Coach sobbed once or twice, convulsively, over the
happy pair. The two Colleges, I could only infer, lived
on the happiest basis of good-fellowship for several
months after this, until the approach of the next foot
ball season recalled them to bitterest enmity once more
with the knowledge that the new star quarter-back
was snooping around after the hard-faced Coach s sec
ond daughter. That, roughly speaking, was the essence
of football as I had grasped it. Obviously it was my
duty to check this impression by a visit to the actual
scene.

28 A VISIT TO AMERICA

A party of young ladies and gentlemen o my ac
quaintance had promised to take me to Princeton to
watch the lads of that University competing with the
lads of Williams, a similar institution, and they ar
ranged to call for me at my hotel at u A.M. on the Sat
urday of the game, and drive me to Princeton. The
first intimation I had of their arrival was at 10.45, when
the hall-porter asked me politely whether I knew that
some guests were down in the cocktail-bar, drinking
whisky and charging it to my room-number. I fled
downstairs just in time to keep the score below five
dollars, and the drive began. We bowled along the
Holland Tunnel and came out, on the New Jersey side,
on to the most magnificent and awe-inspiring road I
have ever seen. For miles and miles it is lifted clean
above the ground on a great ramp of concrete and iron,
and there is room for at least six lines of traffic. The
moment we were on it, my young host put his foot
down on the accelerator pedal and kept it there till we
reached Princeton. The pace was fast but not dizzy.
I found this almost everywhere I went in the United
States, with one notable exception to be described here
after. The power of the American automobiles is,
comparatively speaking, standardized, so that almost
all can do seventy-five miles an hour and few can go
faster and fewer still have to go more slowly, so that
there is not nearly so much passing and re-passing,
cutting-in and cutting-out, as there is in Europe. Cars
are more inclined to take station, like a warship on
manoeuvres, and stay there.

A VISIT TO AMERICA 29

Once off the ramp, you are fairly in the State of New
Jersey. It is a flat, dismal country, looking as if an
army had passed that way and was even now entrench
ing against an enemy twenty miles further on. It re
minded me of the back-areas in France and Flanders.
The fields were desolate. No plough had been there
and no human beings walked there. Weeds and nettles
and tall, rank grasses quivered forlornly in the faint
breeze. Here and there a ruined brick house, or a clus
ter of old wooden shacks, rotting, crumbling, moss-
covered, were a reminder that at one time men had
passed this way and lingered awhile before hastening
from a solitude that was made the more intolerable
by the nearness of a vast city. Sometimes the nettles
were clambering over a heap of rusty tins and a
bramble bush sprouted through the chassis of a motor
car that was standing on its nose in an ancient ditch.
This solitude stretches away for miles and miles to the
right and left of the road until it reaches the horizons
with their ghostly silhouettes of factory chimneys and
of long iron bridges, hideous at short range but, seen
across the russety green of the fields, far away, as lovely
as dew on a spider s web on a September morning.
Sometimes a line of oil-tanks, poised upon steel tripods,
marched across the flatlands looking like the Martians
of H. G. Wells story.

It was a blessed relief when we left the desolation
and ran into the more homely atmosphere of gasoline
stations and advertisements for Coca Cola.

30 A VISIT TO AMERICA

The outline of Princeton, on its wooded hill, is very
beautiful, but there is less beauty about the faked-
Tudor architecture and interior decoration of some of
the college buildings. One of the fraternity houses
looks more like the England of Queen Elizabeth s day
than many a gasoline station on the English roads.

But there was no time for the consideration of
aesthetics.

Princeton was to play football against Williams, and
the Stadium was the magnet. After a few drinks of
neat rye whisky to keep out the icy wind, therefore, we
repaired to our seats. Truly the Americans are a hardy
race. There has been a considerable advance in the
standards of comfort in arenas, amphitheatres, and thea
tres since the ancient Greeks sat huddled upon bare
stones at Epidaurus, or the Sicilians at Taormina, but
the Americans will have none of it. What was good
enough for the Athenian is good enough for him, even
though the winds of New Jersey in November are
somewhat cooler than the breezes of the Isles of Greece,
gilded as they are with eternal summer.

The seats in the Palmer Stadium are just slabs of con
crete, and if you do not like them the remedy is entirely
in your own hands. There is no compulsion on you to
stay. The exits are clearly marked and some one else
will be glad of the space you have vacated.

We wrapped ourselves in rugs, loosened slightly the
tops of our whisky bottles to ensure a freely moving
and prompt service, and lowered ourselves, some with
enthusiasm, and some with reluctance, and myself with

A VISIT TO AMERICA 31

active distaste, on to the icy slabs. A pale, wan sun
peered over the rim of the Stadium, and the wind
wailed drearily from the direction of the Arctic Circle.
The entertainment was due to begin.

First of all came the rival brass-bands, marching,
blowing and banging with immense energy, and after
them followed twelve beautiful young gentlemen in
white shirts and white flannel trousers, each armed
with a gaily coloured megaphone. They took station in
a line at about fifteen yards intervals, between the field
of play and the crowd, and facing the crowd, six on
one side of the ground and six on the other. Then the
six facing us began to behave in a most extraordinary
way. Moving in perfect unison they faced east and
slapped their knees, and then they faced west and
slapped their knees. They shook their fists now hither,
now thither. They waved their arms like men on a raft
in mid-ocean who are attempting to attract the atten
tion of passing ships. Finally they worked themselves
up into an ecstasy of excitement, flinging their bodies
about like demented dervishes, or the High-Priests of
some weird religion who are approaching the climax
of a ritual, the human sacrifice, for instance, or the self-
immolation of the youngest and strongest of the tribe
for the greater glory of the tribe, until at last they
brought their strange incantations to an end by leaping
high into the air and uttering a great cry. Then they
sat down on their megaphones.

In the meanwhile, the six rivals on the other side of
the ground had begun to do their stuff, and were ob-

32 A VISIT TO AMERICA

taining much more gratifying results than our cham
pions. For the serried ranks of the members of the
Williams tribe, or perhaps I should say students and
alumni, accepted their six young men as joint-conduc
tors, as it were, of a human orchestra, and they roared
savagely in time to the leaps and gesticulations. An
almost frightening din came echoing across the Sta
dium. I enquired why the supporters of Princeton
did not do the same. Is it, I asked, owing to the supe
rior gentlemanliness of Princeton students and alumni,
that they refrain from competing in noise with the lads
from Williams? Is there a tradition of good manners
that descends from the days when Nassau Hall was
being built in memory, for some reason, of Dutch King
William III? Far from it, my hosts replied. The
Princeton lads were shouting as loudly as any. But
owing to a curious acoustical quality in the Stadium, they
went on to explain, it is only possible to hear the noise
of the opposition. And after that long explanation it
appeared that their throats had gone a bit dry, for they
produced a whisky bottle and passed it backwards and
forwards a good deal.

Then the teams came out. The Princeton team "con
sisted of about fifty young men, Williams of about
thirty, but my expectation of seeing the grand., if some
what one-sided, muddle of about eighty husky youths
all playing together, was sadly disappointed. Only
eleven on each side actually took the field. The re
mainder sat down in long rows on benches and re
lapsed into a sort of alert coma.

A VISIT TO AMERICA 33

Football in the United States is a cross between,
and combines most of the less pleasing features of,
Rugby Football and the World War. The goal-posts
and the shape of the ball are as in the former, the gen
eral attitude of the participants towards their opponents
as in the latter. The object, as in Rugby, is to score
a touch-down in the enemy s territory and then to
kick a goal. But the two main weapons of the Rugby
players arsenal are hardly used by the Americans. The
swift series of lateral passes, from hand to hand, as the
three-quarter backs come down the Rugby field in the
long diagonal line, is quite unknown, and thus one of
the greatest of all athletic spectacles is missing from
the American game. On the asset side of the account,
however, is the absence of Rugby s most infuriating
tactic the deliberate kicking of the ball out of the field
of play. Is there any other game in the world in which
such a thing is permitted ? Has anyone ever seen Til-
den; temporarily out of breath and anxious for a short
rest, hit all the tennis balls over the grand-stand ? Does
Walter Hagen, finding himself in a tight corner, hit
all his golf balls into an adjacent wood or ocean as it
may be, and hold up the game until they can be
retrieved and his opponent s temper is nicely frayed?
However, all that is a diversion from the topic in hand.

The chief method of advance in Football appeared
to me to be as follows: One player hugs the ball to his
bosom and flings himself into the thick of the enemy,
what time his young playmates try to clear a path for
him by selecting an antagonist and violently assaulting

34 A VISIT TO AMERICA

him. The antagonists either go down like ninepins, in
which case the young gentleman with the ball is quite
liable to advance several yards, or else they evade their
would-be assaulters and, seizing the ball-carrier, hurl
him to the ground, jump on him, kneel, lie, fall, or
bounce on him, and the game is brought to a standstill.
Umpires in white coats, white knickerbockers, white
shoes and white caps with enormous peaks, and black
stockings which alone mar a perfect symphonic en
blanc majeur, come racing up, and the heap of bodies
is disentangled. Corpses, if any, are removed, and the
game goes on. Sometimes there is doubt about the
exact spot on which the gentleman with the ball was
massacred, and a great deal of scrutinizing and peering
goes on. At first I thought the reason was a sentimen
tal desire to inlay a small memorial tablet into the turf
after the game was over, enumerating the virtues, if
any, of the deceased, recording his parentage and place
of birth, and any scholastic triumphs that may have,
improbably, come his way, and concluding with one
of those simple and moving epigrams from the Greek
of Simonides which praise the heroism of those who
died for their country. And for that reason, I thought,
there was this desire to fix the fatal spot. I was quite
wrong, of course. It appears that if the attacking side
can advance ten yards in four bull-like rushes, they are
entitled to four more bull-like rushes, to try to gain
another ten yards. When, therefore, there is some un
certainty whether ten yards and one inch or only nine
yards, two feet, and eleven inches have been gained,

A VISIT TO AMERICA 35

officials come racing out with surveying instruments,
chains, stakes, theodolites, sextants, quadrants, and all
the rest of the apparatus necessary for the literal exer
cise of geometry.

In the meanwhile a staff of statisticians writes down
the exact yardage that each young bull has gained in
each battering-attack, so that on the following day a
million fans may read with a thrill how Mr. Smith
made football history by advancing from his forty-
yard line no less a distance than eighteen inches, or
how Mr. Jones, by an unparalleled display of swerving,
dodging, and sidestepping, carved an inroad into the
enemy s territory of a yard and a quarter.

But the supreme moment in football, for the irrev
erent spectator at least, is the Huddle. The team that
has the ball and is about to try to bucket its way
through, over, or under its adversaries for ten whole
yards, goes into Conference, and this solemn affair is
called the Huddle. They all go into a litde circle, put
their heads down, embrace each other round the shoul
ders, and generally give the impression that at any mo
ment they may burst into Kiss-in-the-Ring, or dance
with girlish charm round an imaginary mulberry-
bush. It is a most engaging ceremony, and reminded
me, for some reason, of many Council meetings of
the League of Nations that I have attended. I am told
that on these occasions of fraternal greetings, the
quarter-back, or master-mind of the team, whispers his
orders for the next variety of tactics. For example, he
may say "Sixty-six B" and woe betide any of the team

36 A VISIT TO AMERICA

who, mixing up in his mind "Sixty-six B" with "A
Hundred and Twenty-four and a half," ruins the
whole play by scragging the opposing guard when he
ought to have scragged the opposing tackle. There
will be some pretty snappy words for him from the
Coach afterwards.

Well, the game goes on. Now Princeton gain six
yards and a half. Now Williams recover a foot of the
lost ground. The wind whistles a shriller note than
ever and the concrete has turned to a slab of ice and
the watery sun has given up its pallid competition with
the flying horsemen of the clouds. The whisky bottles
pass from hand to hand and from lip to lip, faster and
faster, backwards and forwards like a shuttle in a
spinning-loom. From time to time a young man
pitches forward from his slab and subsides, uncon
scious, among the feet of his neighbours. It is not for
me to enquire whether his paralysis has been induced
by an excess of external cold or internal warmth. He
is carried out by his friends and deposited somewhere
in safety. The cheer-leaders are still dancing fren-
ziedly like crazy marionettes, and the substitutes, who
have been delegated to relieve the incompetent, the
halt, and the maimed, are warming up on the line,
apparently trying to hit themselves under the chin
with their knees. Princeton is leading handsomely, but
the students and alumni of that great college are in
despair. For Williams, with only a paltry little squad
of about thirty warriors, have scored a touch-down,
and it is the first time in many a long day that the

A VISIT TO AMERICA 37

Princeton line has been crossed. Shade of President
Madison, once a student at Nassau! Shade of Wood-
row Wilson, who went from the direction of the af
fairs of the college to the direction of the United
States, and thence, for a brief hour, to the direction of
the whole world except the United States Senate!
Shade, if you like, of King William III (though his
loyalties may have been divided between his Nassau
and the lads from Williamstown) !

The minute-hand of the clock creeps to the hour.
With three minutes left to play, the Princeton coach
stops the game and despatches a fresh party of players
into the arena. They have only three minutes in which
to win immortal glory, but at least they will be able
to gather their grandchildren round their knee as the
twilight falls and the lamps are being lit and the cows
are coming home to the byre, and tell them once
more the old heroic tale of how they played for Prince
ton against Williams, way back in the thirties.

The game is over. The elegant young men have led
their last cheer. The whisky bottles flash from hand
to hand for the last time, and then we join the long
shuffle to the car-park.

I was able to identify the Coaches of the two teams,
but among all the charmingly pretty girls who applied
their carmined lips with such daintiness and such pre
cision to the necks of whisky bottles throughout the
game, it was impossible to detect the Coaches lovely

38 A VISIT TO AMERICA

daughters. Nor did the quarter-backs assist me by run
ning true to Saturday Evening Post form. Not once
did they neglect the game to glance up at bright eyes
in the stand. Not once did they blatantly sell the pass
by arrangement with their future father-in-law. In
stead of yielding to the sweet allure of Romance, they
confined all their activities to huddling and homicide.

Twenty-six players were killed while playing foot
ball in the year of my visit. During the last four years
a total of exactly one hundred and fifty have been
killed. And this in spite of suits of padded armour
and helmets and shin-guards and thigh-pieces. Per
sonally I would prefer the cold slab in the Stadium to
the one in the mortuary.

When we got back to New York City (having, by
the way, been pinched with extraordinary neatness for
speeding in the.Hblland Tunnel; there was no fuss
simply a telephone-call from some invisible watcher
and a cop waiting for us at the other end) we bought
the evening papers and found that a college called St.
Mary s had been narrowly defeated by the University
of California at Los Angeles. As the St. Mary s team
was referred to throughout the report as the Gaels, I
naturally took a keen interest in their fortunes. After
all, we Gaels, members of a dying race, must stick to
gether all over the world. The Tartan (except the

A VISIT TO AMERICA 39

Campbell Tartan) Against All Else must be the slogan
of the Clans until there is no more Tartan left. The
names of the footballing Gaels were:

Strub Elduayan Schreiber

Meister Yezerski Michelini

Kordick Pennine Kellogg

Jorgensen Fiese

If anyone supposes that I have invented or exag
gerated this list, let him write a respectful letter, enclos
ing a stamped and addressed envelope for the reply, to
those ladies and gentlemen whose duty it is to keep
the athletic records of St. Mary s College, and ask for
a list of the players in the games against the University
of California in the thirties.

The main defence of this extraordinary game is that
it is a reflection in miniature of the essential funda
mentals of the American character. The spirit which
drove the Pioneers into the prairies/the deserts, and the
mountains, is the same which launches the flying tackle
at the racing adversary and which accepts injuries and
endures suffering with a stoic fortitude. There is much
to be said for this argument, and much to be said
against it. The bull-like quality of the short, and usually
futile, rushes against the wall of the defence may be de
scribed as a microcosm of Washington s tenacity at Val
ley Forge, of Lee s frontal attack on the Cemetery
Ridge at Gettysburg, of Grant s dreadful battering at

40 A VISIT TO AMERICA

the impregnable defences at Spottsylvania and Cold
Harbor, and of the heroism with which the new Ameri
can armies flung themselves against the veteran ma
chine-gunners in the Forest of the Argonne. All that
may be true. And it might be added that there is also
a dash of stupidity about it which slightly resembles the
exploits of the brave but unfortunate General Custer.
Certain it is that when a subtle and imaginative genius
at last applied himself to the evolution of new and cun
ning devices in the game, the bull-headed rushers were
completely baffled, and it took years before any one else
even faintly understood what the late Mr. Knute
Rockne was up to, or how he achieved his sensational
results. Is it significant that this great Football-brain
was of Scandinavian origin, and that his work of revo
lutionizing football was achieved in a Catholic college ?
I do not know. I merely ask the Questions.

But the argument which, to my mind, demolishes the
theory that football is symbolical of the American char
acter is this: whatever may be said for or against it as a
game, as a spectacle, or as training-ground for the youth
of the country, no one can deny that it is, of all games
in the world, in excdsis, the Team-Game of Team-
Games. Every single movement, whether in attack or
in defence, requires the active and instant co-operation
of the entire eleven men. Each man has something to
do all the time, whether it is just plain assassination or
an intricate movement on the tips of his toes, and if
one cog in the wheel fails to work, the machinery
breaks down. *

A VISIT TO AMERICA 41

Now, go to any hundred-per-cent American and sug
gest to him that his great country was built up out of
Puritanism and Prairies by the Team-Spirit. Bridling
with ill-concealed indignation he will inform you that
America was built up by the exact antithesis of the
Team-Spirit. He will tell you that the watchword of
the nation is, always has been, and always will be, In
dividualism. And that is not all. It is none of your
ordinary Individualism, none of your decaying, sheep-
like, European Individualism. No, sir. It is a Rugged
Individualism. That is what it is. Rugged. And if you
are prudent, you will hastily agree with him, for by
this time there will probably be a wild glare in his eye,
as though he had subconsciously reverted to the char
acter of his great-grandfather, who was so individualis
tic that he walked by himself from Aroostook, Maine,
to El Paso del Norte, and was so rugged that the toma
hawks of the Piutes bounced off his skull and had to
be sent away to have their handles straightened.

It would probably provoke a fatal catastrophe if you
suggested that this rugged old gentleman would have
played Kiss-in-the-Ring, or danced round the mulberry-
bush, or whatever it is, with his colleagues, or would
have unselfishly passed the ball to one of them in order
to promote the fortunes of the Team, or would have
allowed his movements to be dictated, his physical
courage aspersed, the legitimacy of his birth called in
question, and his private morals animadverted upon,
by a hired Coach with however many beautiful daugh
ters.

42 A VISIT TO AMERICA

It is best not to embark upon such controversial mat
ters, but simply to record the private opinion that
American football, with its twin principles of Collabo
ration and War, has nothing whatever to do with the
traditional American character, with its twin principles
of Individualism and Peace.

As I write these words, another proof comes most
opportunely to my hand, that this fierce game is alien
to the peace-loving nature of the American citizen. It
is the report, by one of the foremost sporting journalists
in the country, of the Rose Bowl game. The journalist,
obviously trying to lash himself into a suitably mili
taristic frame of mind for describing the play, compares
one of the players to a "human howitzer" who throws
the ball "from his rifle-shot hand" and then, after coun
tering a "main spear thrust," proceeded to "uncover his
main double battery" and "smashed through the de
fence like an antelope." Small wonder that Stanford
"had no aerial net no anti-aircraft fire to break up the
Southern game."

If that is not the language of a pacifically minded
gentleman, writing for a pacifically minded public
which knows nothing,, and cares less, about the jargon
of Mars, then I will eat a Stetson.

CHAPTER THREE

"Stand up, tall masts of Mannahatta! stand up, beautiful hills of Brooklyn!"

WALT WHITMAN.

SHORTLY after returning home from the football-game,
I had one or two more opportunities of looking at New
York, and each time I took a stroll, usually on foot but
once in a taxi.

After the first dazzle of the skyscrapers had slightly
worn off and I had grown a little accustomed to the
beautiful and absurd things, there was more leisure to
stare at sights that were less impressive but none the
less strange. The Elevated Railroad, for example, is a
weird contraption which lacks every jot of the two
qualities America yearns for. It has neither the swift,
silent efficiency of Modernity, nor the quiet dignity of
Age. It is the sort of railroad which I would have built
if I had been mechanically minded and half-witted,
and it makes the sort of noise which would drown a
fair-sized artillery bombardment and which would
make the national anthem of a tribe of Congolese
Africans, played fortissimo with old saws upon sheets
of rutsy tin, sound like the love-song of a Tyrolean
maiden on a spring morning. Here, as in the Subway,
you can buy the entire system for a nickel, which struck
me as a very moderate sum considering that it includes

43

44 A VISIT TO AMERICA

a fleeting glimpse, at a range of approximately twelve
feet, into about ten thousand domestic interiors as you
whiz past. It is a barbarous form of transport. The
passenger might well expect to find Voodoo being
practised by the station officials, and a stall on each
platform where a sacred white cock may be purchased
and a sacrificial knife obtained from a slot-machine.
There are those who consider the Street Car more hide
ous than the Elevated as it clanks its dreary way along,
but it is a controversy which admits of a wide and un
profitable discussion. But both sides are agreed that
where you have a Street Car under an Elevated, the
savage scream and the dismal clank together, there you
have an abnegation of all the cultural dreams that Man
has striven to realize throughout the ages. Third Ave
nue is a living proof that all Progress, except Progress
backwards, and very occasionally sideways, is a vain
chimaera.

Let us leave this painful subject. The New Yorker s
best transport is his own legs. Next come the private
automobile and the taxi, and after that the Fifth Ave
nue veterans. Bracketed last, a long way down the
course, come the fearful triplets of dinginess and noise,
the Subway, the Elevated, and the Street Car.

There is something either strange or comical to be
seen on every block. At one moment it may be the
offices of the Bartenders School, Incorporated, at an
other the shop of a gentleman who advertises a nice

A VISIT TO AMERICA 45

line in pants and Gabardines. A Rolls-Royce, sprinkled
liberally with footmen and chauffeurs in livery, will
find itself held up by the cart of an itinerant seller of
gaily coloured mattresses, crying his wares in a Medi
terranean accent and striking three Swiss sheep-bells
all the time with the handle of a baseball bat.

Down by West Twenty-Third the cheerful calls of
the urchins one to another, and the refined conversa
tion of the dwellers in London Terrace (the largest
apartment-house in the world, where the hall-porters
are dressed in a sort of parody of the uniform of the
London police), are punctuated by the melancholy
clanging of the bells on the locomotives as the Pennsyl
vania trains go creeping out. They sound like a bell-
buoy warning steamers against hidden death. Up on
West Fifty-second the rows of dingy little houses,
windows shuttered and grimy, doors splintered, iron
railings all bent and rusty, are survivals of that epoch
when the youth of a nation learnt to soak bad whisky
and worse gin in speakeasies, and when an Anglo-
Saxon race handed power and wealth on a platter to
the scum of Naples and Sicily. Down in West Third
there is a colony of dingy shops each one of which is
occupied by a manufacturer of hat-linings, and on the
ornate bronze ceilings of the elevators of the Munici
pal Building you will find the Royal Arms of Eng
land. (Perhaps they are placed there ironically, for
these elevators are the creakiest and jerkiest that I ever
was in.)

On Park Avenue there is a shop called Barkis,

46 A VISIT TO AMERICA

Willing & Co., and the boxes for the mailing of par
cels are not fastened down in any way, but just stand
about loose and haphazard on the sidewalks, inviting
an enterprising bandit to hoist the whole thing into a
truck and drive off with it. The walls of the post of
fices are lined with the bulletins of the Department of
Justice of wanted fugitives^ with photographs, finger
prints, criminal record, etc. so that, if you feel so in
clined, you can write out your letter and study the
faces of the most hideous thugs at the same time.

And if you are tired of walking, put your foot on a
shoeblack s stool in Broadway and lean back against
the wall, and watch the folks go hurrying up and
down this strangest of all streets. You never know what
you are going to see next. It is as fatal to generalize
about Broadway as about the United States. Peanuts,
shoeblacks, and cinemas are the commonest sights. A
skyscraper stands side by side with a theatre built in
the classic style with columns, capitals, and pediment,
and advertised by a gigantic green jackboot, and next
door may be a one-story wooden candy store, four feet
by six. If New York is a miniature world, Broadway
is a miniature New York. All the rushing haste is
there, and yet you may see a saunter er; all the genius
of the New World goes racing by, and yet you may
see a Tibetan Lama in meditation; all the architects
of the Twentieth Century may build a skyscraper, but
you may see a log cabin beside it. Gaudy theatres and
dismal poverty, sables and rags, glittering neon lights
and dirty alleys, Broadway is like a New England

A VISIT TO AMERICA 47

hooked-rug, made up of any scrap that comes to
hand.

But after all it is only a miniature. There are other
things to see in New York than giant green jackboots
on Hellenic architecture.

A whole world separates the peanut-seller of Broad
way from the maritime folk of South Street, that small
beginning amid the coves of the island from which has
evolved the greatest port in the world. It is only a
hundred and fifty years ago that Catherine Slip and
Coenties Slip were little creeks in the sand. But Broad
way up by Seventieth and Eightieth streets neither
knows nor cares who built the foundations of the port,
any more than the Londoner of Kensington knows or
cares two pins about the Port of London.

In order to avoid the reproach of writing about
places that I had never seen, I made several attempts
to get off Manhattan Island into some of the other
boroughs. The statement that "y u can t understand
New York by looking only at Fifth Avenue" is only
second in popularity at cocktail-parties to its elder
brother, "You can t understand America by looking
only at New York."

I tried, or almost tried, them all. It was a dismal
business. The Bronx came first and succeeded in im
pressing its personality no better than by leaving be
hind a memory of dingy little houses, badly paved
streets, garish advertisements, factories, heaps of rubble,

40 A VISIT TO AMERICA

tumble-down warehouses, railroad cuttings, alley-ways,
and a general atmosphere of seedy dilapidation.

Queens, contrariwise, is full of open spaces., stretch
ing in splendid procession with almost contiguous
boundaries, for miles. Wide and clear under the sky,
they put to shame the tenemental squalor of the
Bronx, and serve as ventilators through which the citi
zens of Queens can breathe the air of Ocean. They
march eastwards in healthy stateliness, these open
spaces, Calvary Cemetery, New Calvary Cemetery,
Mount Zion Cemetery, Mount Olivet, the two Luther
ans, Linden Hill Cemetery, Mount Carmel, Mount
Neboh and again Mount Carmel, and Union Field
Cemetery, to the Cemetery of the Evergreens, the Cy
press Hills Cemetery, the Salem Field Cemetery, and
the borders of Brooklyn. Further north there are two
more of the open spaces of Queens, side by side in
somewhat sinister proximity, the St. Michael s Ceme
tery and the Grand Central Air Port.

I never achieved Jersey City, except in rapid transit,
as rapid as possible, to further fields. Many a time I
gazed at it across the Hudson and resolved to cross
over and explore the amenities of its innumerable
railroad stations, but always my heart failed me at the
sight of that grimy silhouette. Once I got as far as to
board a ferry-boat, but it was no good. Just as the local
Charon was about to cast off, I fled down the gangway
with a hoarse scream, back to the sheltering bosom of
old Mother Manhattan. It was a narrow escape, and
I could appreciate at that moment the slightly melo-

A VISIT TO AMERICA 49

dramatic gesture of all those heroes of history who
have knelt down and kissed the sand of one beach or
another in their time.

But although Jersey City was thus shirked, perhaps
as a sop to conscience because Jersey City was thus
shirked, I took a great deal of trouble over Brooklyn.

Now Brooklyn has one distinction that raises it
high above the dingy Bronx, above even the cemeterial
Queens, and for all I know (and I should certainly
think it probable) over Jersey City. It has all the noise,
all the squalor, all the shabbiness of the others, and
more than its share of the criminal sub-European ele
ment, but here and there the wanderer will come un
expectedly upon little blocks of eighteenth century
houses, unspoilt and as lovely as the day on which they
were built. They are scattered about in side-streets and
by-ways, and there are even one or two seventeenth cen
tury farmhouses still standing, I am told, presumably
with a good deal of perplexity, in the heart of the
borough. Columbia Heights, an eighteenth century
row that looks across the East River to the Manhattan
skyline and over Governor s Island down the Hudson,
must surely have the most stupendous views from its
windows of any residential houses in the world. Life
in Columbia Heights must be just a series of dashes
from window to window. Now the Berengaria is
coming slowly up to the Cunard dock; now a destroyer
pulls out of the Navy yard and heads for the Atlantic;
sometimes a ship will berth just below the house so
that her foremast is almost in the dining-room, and

50 A VISIT TO AMERICA

sometimes the sunlight explodes in a blaze upon the
top of the Empire State Building. Columbia Heights
is no place for a writer or an artist unless he has a
large private income from money invested in safe Gov
ernment Bonds.

These beautiful old houses make the rest of Brook
lyn seem very queer. For instance, Fulton Street, the
main shopping street, is as queer a street as I ever saw
in my life. As a general rule, a go-ahead, enterprising,
commercial community will try to make its shopping
centre as attractive as possible to those ladies and gen
tlemen who have money to spend and are showing a
tentative disposition to spend some of it. The attrac
tion may take the form of comfort, ease, and luxury,
as in the premises of a Bond Street picture-dealer, or of
ready accessibility, as in the Champs Elysees, or of
tasteful and yet opulent window display as in the
establishments of Messrs. Cartier, or of a wild pictur-
esqueness as in the bazaars of Fez and Ferghana and
Ispahan. Whatever the method, the theory is the same.
The rich, already dallying, are to be allured into dally-
iag one second too long so that in that last second
they may yield to the enticement of the wares for sale.

Fulton Street, the chief bazaar of Brooklyn, is a long
narrow street, flanked as in Paris or Ispahan or any
where else, with the wares of the merchant. The de
partment stores are as grand as anything on Manhattan
and as brilliantly lit-up in the evening. But down the
centre of the street runs the ubiquitous Street Car,
painted just the same dingy fawn colour (though per-

A VISIT TO AMERICA 51

haps fawn is hardly the word to apply to this system
of traction), and economizing just as rigidly upon
lubricating oil, as anything on Manhattan, and above
the Street Car roars and jangles the Elevated. Between
the rails of the Street Cars and the sidewalks there is
just room to squeeze an automobile, and to the lamp
posts and traffic signal posts are affixed severe notices,
"No parking here" and "No cruising for taxis." These
two notices, when considered separately from the other
amenities of the street, might be taken as an ingenious
device to entrap the rich. It is easy to drive to a store
in Fulton, but, your car having been shooed away and
the cruising taxi being forbidden, it is almost impos
sible to get out again, and you might therefore spend
more money than you intended, to the profit of the
store-keeper and to the satisfaction of those political
economists who would cure all our evils by a freer
circulation of currency. This would be a plausible, al
most convincing, theory if it were not for the Street
Cars and the Elevated. No human being with the
slightest endowment of artistic sensibility would re
main in Fulton Street an instant longer than was
absolutely necessary on his first visit. He would run
away screaming (and nobody would hear him), on foot,
rather than wait a moment for his Duesenberg, and
would never revisit the accursed place. Ah! you say,
but the rich have no endowment of artistic sensibility.
But the rich, I reply shrewdly, have as good an endow
ment of ears as their neighbours. And anyway, I add,
think of Andrew Carnegie. To which you very reason-

52 A VISIT TO AMERICA

ably answer that you have no desire to think of
Andrew Carnegie, and there the matter comes to an
end. Nevertheless, I still maintain that, as a shopping
street, Fulton is the worst I ever saw.

And even now I have not come to the end of Ful
ton s monstrosities. To the East the street broadens
out into a spacious circle, just as Fifth Avenue blossoms
into Washington Square, and Piccadilly and the
Elysees into the Circus and the Etoile. Here also the
Brooklyners run true to form. For this circle is the
meeting place, not only of innumerable Street Car
tracks, but of no fewer than four elevated railways
criss-crossing one another in a weird and hideous welter
of shape and sound. Let us leave this grim subject.

Brooklyn is a city of small houses. There are streets
and streets with nothing higher than two or three
stories, and stately avenues are often lined with the
most quaint little buildings. But the thing which at
once stamps and explains Brooklyn is this: it is a city
of more than two million inhabitants, and yet it only
has four big hotels, and they are all jammed together
in the once fashionable neighbourhood of the Heights.
The fact is, of course, that nobody goes to Brooklyn
for pleasure, and those who go for work are not the
sort who live in big hotels. On the other hand, almost
as many people seem to go there to die, as to Queens,
for there are lots of splendid hospitals and quantities
of cemeteries.

I walked slowly back in the evening, past the Walt
Whitman house and across Brooklyn Bridge. The mist

A VISIT TO AMERICA 53

was a deep violet over the Chrysler Building, blessedly
almost hiding it altogether, and the shadows of the
swarming craft upon the East River were lengthening.
A clatter of steam-hammers came faintly from the
Brooklyn Navy Yard where a warship was lying, grey
against the jumble of slums which seem to welcome
the returning sailor all over the world, and a vast
advertisement on the wall of a building announced
"Largest Jewish Daily in the World/ and just below
me, on the next track of the bridge, rattled a Street Car
labelled "King s Highway." What a city! For more
than a hundred and fifty years its citizens have been
piously celebrating its True Republican Principles,
and its emancipation from the decadent, degrading,
dismal, influence of Royalty. And yet it sees nothing
funny or peculiar in a Street Car labelled "King s High
way." Again I say, What a city! What else can one
say?

My last stroll in New York City, before setting out
to conquer the interior of the country, was done by
taxi. It began with a curious, probably unique, little
scene. While being driven in a taxi home to my hotel
at three o clock in the morning, I fell into conversation
with the driver, an intelligent young Jew named, as
his identification card inside the cab informed me,
Isidore Grunbaum. (It is a great deal easier to talk to,
and to be overheard by, a taxi-driver in New York than
in London. The British cabman is cut off from his fare

54 A VISIT TO AMERICA

by glass, which makes the fare safe from eavesdrop
ping and also makes him stand in the rain while giv
ing his instructions and again when paying his dues.)
On arriving at my hotel in Madison Avenue, I asked
Mr. Grunbaum if he would drive me round the city
for four hours on the following afternoon, for the sum
of ten dollars. "Too much," replied Mr. Grunbaum;
"I will do it for seven." "Nonsense," I said, "I ll give
you ten." "I ll only take seven," he replied stubbornly.
A compromise was, of course, reached. But surely it
is the first case on record of a Scotsman offering too
much to a Jew and the Jew refusing to take it.

Punctual to the minute, Isidore arrived that after
noon with his handsome black and scarlet cab and we
started off. We went to some queer places and I saw
some queer things. I saw the Bowery, famous to all
Europeans as the legendary home of street-gangs and
Boys, and now sunk into an irredeemable poverty. A
shave costs three cents in the Bowery and a meal can
be got for ten. Fifteen cents will buy a night s lodging
in a common dormitory and another five secures you
the privacy of a board a few feet high cutting off the
rest of the dormitory. The shops are full of old junk,
obviously the fragments of furniture of the evicted and
the distrained, and every street looks like a street of
sellers without any buyers. Thence into Chinatown,
home of the laundry, and across into Centre Street
where the Bridge of Sighs, high above a side-street,
links, fatally, the Central Police Headquarters to the
famous Tombs prison, a grim, pseudo-mediaeval fortress

A VISIT TO AMERICA 55

of dirty, dark-grey stones. Centre Street and the
Tombs were in a fine frenzy at the time of my visit,
for only the day before, a criminal had been brought
from the Tombs across the Bridge of Sighs to be exam
ined in the "line-up." He was the last of a row of
prisoners, and he was handcuffed to the prisoner next
to him. Misliking the whole procedure, and fain to be
elsewhere, he had waited until attention was focussed
on some other scoundrel, and then had eased the hand
cuff off his wrist and strolled out through the doors
that are invariably kept locked and were found locked
after his departure. He had not been seen since.

From the Tombs we rambled to the City Hall and
thence to Orchard Street with its row of street-traders
on each side, where in Isidore s words, "You can buy
anything from a battleship to a button." The bargain
ing in Orchard Street seemed to be pretty intensive.
Oriental eyes were flashing, and Levantine shoulders
were being shrugged with a rapidity that would have
put to shame a skilled player of the concertina. Voices
were raised in expostulation and dark hands were
gesticulating with a superb vehemence. "You ask the
price of a pair of spectacles," explained Isidore, "and he
says fifty cents. You offer him three cents, and after
twenty minutes you compromise on a nickel."

In Greenwich Village we dived down a flight of
steps into a small bar that was half full of the ordinary
type of bar-frequenter, and half full of an "arty" crew,
talking a little too loudly and looking aggressively
unselfconscious. It reminded me of the Cadogan Arms

56 A VISIT TO AMERICA

and the Six Bells, both in the King s Road, Chelsea,
London, in the days when third-rate painters and first-
rate models used to sit on high stools, and drink beer,
and smoke cigarettes through enormous green cigarette
holders, and protest with slightly raised voices that
they were waiting, by appointment, for Augustus John.

Isidore and I leaned on the counter in a corner and
he told me about himself and about New York. He
was born in London, in the Whitechapel Road, but his
father had emigrated three years later. Isidore had
been trained to be a Rabbi, "and now I am a hack-
man," he said. From training for the Rabbinate he
drifted into cab-driving, and from cab-driving into
business, and when his business failed in the great
Slump, "I went back to my cab." Isidore owned his
own cab and wrote a weekly article for a newspaper
that was devoted to the affairs and interests of taxi-
men.

Isidore s prose style, like Mr. Dizzy Dean s, runs to
the vigorous and the picturesque. He carries a punch
in both hands and is not afraid to use it. This is an
extract from Isidore s column:

As A BROOKLYN HACKIE SEES NEW YORK

When will these cheap muzzlers and chislers learn to hack
like men, instead of blocking up traffic as they do around the
various entrances of the Waldorf?. . . Notice that the new
traffic regulation prohibiting parking in the theatrical zone
is again prohibited between 7.45 and 9 P.M. . . . Orchids to
the cop who last Tuesday night at Broadway and 5oth street

A VISIT TO AMERICA 57

gave justice to the hackie who was being shoved around on
a closed line, by four would-be hackmen. . . . Willie, the
dispatcher of the Alliance Cab, is now ill and his friends in
the industry wish him a speedy recovery. . . . What is there
to the rumour that the Alliance Garage will not be getting
any new Paramounts? . . . Hackstands around the Grand
Central are nicely located. We would like more of them

And here is another:

TOWN TAXI DOINGS

Winey Ganzi, formerly president of the Town Taxi,
found hacking so good that he has gone into the glove busi
ness. And Kid Skinzi got a forty-five cent call; fare had no
money and gave him 25 (twenty-five count em) bottles of
beer instead of the dough. They all had a party and Skinzi
could of had a date if he wanted it,

It makes a professional author a little wistful to see
a hackman, even if he is trained for the Rabbinate,
muscle in on the literary racket with such pep and vim.

The New York hackman, said Isidore, has a pretty
poor time in a good many ways, and the independent
owner has to face the cut-throat competition of the big
fleets, the Yellow and the Radio, as well. Hacking is
lousy, said Isidore. A hackie can put in as much as
twelve to sixteen hours a day and still make less than
he would if he was on Relief. Isidore as an independ
ent owner, and an acutely intelligent man, was keenly
interested in the competition of the fleets, and after a
good deal of beer in the Greenwich Village bar, we

58 A VISIT TO AMERICA

repaired to a Special Meeting of the Independent
Owners, Isidore as a Delegate, myself posing as some
thing pretty hot in London s hack-world. The meeting
took place in a Downtown office and consisted of fif
teen Jews, an Italian, an Anglo-Saxon and myself. The
proceedings lasted three hours and consisted almost
entirely of dialogue that ran on the following spirited
sort of lines:

MR. ZUSCHELHEIM: Mr. Chairman, the only thing I ask of
the company is that we should concentrate upon our com
mon welfare and refrain completely from personalities, but I
feel it my duty to say that Mr. Apfelbaum over there is
nothing but a lousy crook. (Uproar.)
CHAIRMAN (Mr. Jacob) : Order, order. I will not allow
MR. APFELBAUM (striding a table and -pushing his nose
into Mr. Z. s face) : And who was it swindled his firm out of
the insurance premiums? (Uproar.)
CHAIRMAN: Gentlemen, We are here to co-operate
MR. Z.: I will co-operate with any one in the world, but
not with Mr. Apfelbaum, who is the lousiest crook in New
York (Uproar.)

MR. WERNICK: No, sir, the lousiest crook in New York is
Mr. Eisenpreis sitting right there besides you. (Uproar.)

MR. EISENPREIS (shading his fist at Mr. WernicJ() : And
what jail were you in when I was fighting the Independents
battle last year ? (Uproar.)

CHAIRMAN: Gentlemen, we are here to co-operate

MR. ZELTINGER: Mr. Chairman, I move that we resolve to

co-operate to the utmost in defending ourselves to the utmost

against unfair competition, but before I move it I want to

know, Mr. Chairman, what rake-off you are getting out of

A VISIT TO AMERICA 59

this and who are you getting it from. Pandemonium.
Frantic waving of cheap cigars, this being, apparently, the
Jewish Independent Taxi-Owners -favourite form of gesture.
Only Isidore remains quiet. He whispers to me that he will
bet me a dollar to a nickel that the only Resolution that will
be passed will be a Resolution to do nothing.

After three hours of slander and counter-slander,
invective and counter-invective, accusation and coun
ter-accusation, the meeting agreed upon a Resolution,
moved from the Chair, and passed unanimously, "that
a further meeting be called in a month s time, and
that in the meantime nothing be done."

After that we went and drank some more beer and
Isidore talked about rackets and gambles. He told me
about the Clip-Joint Racket which depends for its
existence mainly upon the inexhaustible supply of rich
business men who arrive on the spree from Pittsburgh,
and Cleveland, and St. Louis, and elsewhere, at the
Pennsylvania and Grand Central stations and tell the
taxi-driver to drive them to some place where they can
enjoy themselves. If the driver is a respectable man, he
will not risk his license and will drop his fare at the
Plaza or the Waldorf-Astoria. But if he is disreputable,
he will drive his man to the Clip- Joint and return next
day for his rake-off. Isidore told me about the big
Slot-Racket, and the Number-Racket on the horse
races, and the Italian-Racket of the Game of the Ten
Cities, and the Harlem game which is so neatly or
ganized that each street has its bet-collector who calls
at every house every morning for the dimes. "This

60 A VISIT TO AMERICA

city," said Isidore, "is built upon gambling. Each sec
tion has its own national game, beginning with Wall
Street and working down through Poles, Italians,
Czechos, till you get down to the nigger dimes.

"This city," said Isidore, "is plumb-full of rackets.
I picked up a fare last April, that s eight months ago,
and I drove him from East Ninth to Radio City. When
he gets out he says I drove so badly that he s strained
his back over a bump. There weren t any bumps, but
wot-the-hell. You don t need real bumps to go to
Court. You need a crook doctor and a crook lawyer.
The next thing I knew was a claim for a thousand
dollars. A month after that my insurance company
went bankrupt. But wot-the-hell. The Courts are so
full up of cases that it won t come up for another two
years,, and by that time I ll be bankrupt."

"Oh, I hope not, Mr. Grunbaum," I said politely.

Isidore looked at me blankly. "How do you mean
you hope not? If that case ever comes into Court I ll
turn my cab over to my brother and go broke. I m not
going to pay a thousand dollars to that racket. Say,
listen, do you know how dopers inject themselves if
they haven t got enough money to buy a hypodermic ?
They take the biggest safety-pin they can find, and
they jab it into their arm and leave it there until it
makes a big enough hole to stay open. ..."

I saw many things that day. I saw a Funeral Par
lour, in the window of which the sole exhibit was an
advertisement of a Grand Card-reception and Dance
at the Pennsylvania Hotel. I saw a large and handsome

A VISIT TO AMERICA 6l

building which called itself Educational Building.
There was a show-case at the entrance to it, and in the
show-case there were three books called, "Murder in
Bermuda/ "Death in the Theatre" and "Death of an
Honest Broker." We hastened on. I had no desire to
investigate the curriculum, nor interview any of the
professors who lectured on such startling subjects. I
saw a sudden wave of beauty, carrying more pretty
girls on each yard of its crest than six blocks of Fifth
or Park Avenue ever carry in the daytime, which
showed us that the staff of Macy s Department Store
had just been dismissed from its work, and in Union
Square we paused for a moment to listen to an orator
addressing a crowd under the shadow of Lafayette s
elegant statue (though it is surely a poor compliment
to the swordsmanship of that great man to make him
grasp the blade of his sword so firmly) and at the
end we rounded the Washington Arch, with its rows
of lovely old red brick houses on each side, and
there in front of us was the long stretch of Fifth Ave
nue rising slowly towards the sky and then falling
away over the hill into the dove-blue shadows of the
evening.

While I was wandering through Manhattan s semi-
practical, semi-romantic street-system, now gazing
with admiration at the front of the Players Club, now
shocked by the Lady Chapel of St. Patrick s Cathedral,
at one moment enchanted by the old houses in Grove

62 A VISIT TO AMERICA

Street or Macdougal Alley, at the next running with
loud screams away from the brown horror of the Fifth
Avenue Presbyterian Church, I missed one whole class
of place-names. I could not find a Bunker Hill Ave
nue, nor a Yorktown Park, nor a Saratoga Railroad
Station, nor a Concord Bridge, nor any other record
of the defeats of the British Arms. There is no flaunt
ing in New York of the miserable scuttlings and sur-
renderings of the Royal Armies, as London flaunts its
Waterloo and Trafalgar, and Paris the hundred great
victories of France. And it would appear that the spirit
which prefers the everyday work of peace to the ad
vertisement of ancient slaughters is still dominant, be
cause I could not find an Argonne Avenue or a St.
Mi hi el Boulevard, or anything more bellicose than a
few memorials to famous soldiers, a bridge and a
square for Washington, a square for Pershing, a tomb
for Grant, and for Sherman an equestrian statue,
advancing cautiously to battle in the Plaza behind the
petticoats of a well-developed lady.

CHAPTER FOUR

"Where the Katy-did works her chromatic reed on the walnut-tree over
the well."

WALT WHITMAN.

THE PIOUS tourist has always his Mecca. For the Amer
ican in England it is Stratford-on-Avon. For the Eng
lishman in the East it is the Club. For the Frenchman
anywhere it is France, and for all children of the Brit
ish Empire in London it is Lord s cricket-ground. As
a pious British tourist in America, therefore, I paid the
customary visit of ceremony to Harlem. This invari
able homage to Central Africa is the outcome of three
strong forces. Firstly, there is the power of Tradition,
to which no country accords a greater deference than
Great Britain. Every British traveller has always been
to Harlem, and so every British traveller will always
continue to go to Harlem. It is one of the things that
are "done." In the next place, when he returns to
Great Britain, the first, and often the only, question
that will be put to the traveller is, "Did you go to
Harlem?" If he falters, stammers a little, and replies,
"Well, not exactly," there will be a painful silence and
then a change of conversation. I was once present in
the smoking-room of a Club in St. James s Street when
a friend of mine named Smith entered with a guest

64 A VISIT TO AMERICA

named Brown and addressed himself to a somnolent
lieutenant-general named Robinson as follows: "Gen
eral, let me introduce Mr. Brown. Mr. Brown has
been living in New York for the last thirty years."

"Ah! Mr. Brown/ replied the courteous old boy.
"Thirty years in New York, eh? Did you go to
Harlem?"

And the third reason which attracts the citizens of
the Empire to Harlem is a lively, and quite under
standable, curiosity to view some coloured folks who
do not dwell under the beneficent shadow of that
Empire s flag. It is always a faint surprise to the Brit
ish when any of these are actually visible to the naked
eye, and it is well worth a pilgrimage to have a look
at them.

I duly went to Harlem and so qualified for the green
turban. Green is the right word. For I went in the
small hours of the morning to a night-club that was
run entirely to attract strangers and mugs like myself,
and I saw of course just as much of the real Harlem
as a traveller sees of the African jungle by sitting in
the cocktail-bar of a Union Castle liner in the harbour
of Cape Town. And this was a pity., for Harlem is
unique, a centuries-old African kraal in the middle
of the great Progressive capital of the West. The
houses look as if they are made of stone, but all the
same they are, if you look at them properly, primaeval
huts. Harlem may be only three hundred years old
historically, but the spirit is the spirit of the ageless
jungle. But the ordinary, casual visitor can get to know

A VISIT TO AMERICA 65

nothing of it. If he wanders through the district in the
daylight, he sees nothing but a district populated by
blacks instead of whites, hastening on the small
round of daily tasks in just the same way as any one
else, while if he wanders the streets at night he has
the choice of rambling where he likes and probably
getting his throat cut with a razor, or else of keeping
to the well-defined, beaten track and going to the arti
ficial night-clubs which cater for him just as the cafes
in Montparnasse and Montmartre used to cater for the
Anglo-Saxon tourists in the days when the pound and
the dollar were worth a pound and a dollar.

The dressed-up cafes and cabarets of Harlem are
loathsome places, in which the fastidious visitor does
not dislike and despise the negro singers and dancers
quite so heartily as the negroes themselves dislike and
despise the white singers and dancers. Thick African
lips twist contemptuously at the pretty youths who
caper about in feminine dress, and the barbaric rattle
of drums which once called the warriors to war now
accompanies a painted and fetching young man in his
obscene contortions. The honest Dutch burghers who
built the village of Harlem would be surprised if they
could see it now.

Party followed party. High-ball followed high-ball.
t>ay by day the pace grew faster and faster. Week by
week my collection of honorary memberships of Clubs
grew larger and larger. But the autumnal leaves were

66 A VISIT TO AMERICA

turning to "crimson and russet and olive and gold,"
and the first faint hints of frost were in the early morn
ing air, and the breezes from the Atlantic were no
longer laden with the balm and myrrh of the Gulf
Stream, and Hannibal, if I may compare myself to that
illustrious soldier, was still dallying in Capua. Above
the din of the Elevated a new and steady hum was
gathering in volume every day, the tinkle of many
silvery voices repeating, "You can t understand America
by looking only at New York." People began to ask,
innocently, "When are you leaving?" And as a topic
for conversation my Proposed Itinerary began to oust
Reminiscences of Prohibition- and even, so strong was
Public Feeling in the matter, "Depression; Will it last
for Ever?" And when I heard that at some tables it
was running neck and neck with the Iniquities of the
President, it became painfully clear to me that I must
make a move. The only problem was, In which direc
tion should that move be made ?

It was not that there was any dearth of Advice on
the matter. On the contrary. The world seemed as
anxious to get me out of New York as it had seemed
to be delighted to get me in, and amateur Itinerarians
were plentiful. For it is a subject the Itinerary of
travelling writers upon which, as upon so few others,
Americans not only feel very strongly, but hold clear-
cut views that are not befogged by the amiable senti-
mentalism of the national character. They are indig
nant enough rather unjustly, as I have already shown
when British authors slink home from a whirl of

A VISIT TO AMERICA 67

New York gaiety and then throw quarts of vitriol at
America. But what really annoys them is their belief
that British authors do not even take the trouble to go
and look at the places which will ultimately become
the targets for the corrosive liquid.

"A week in New York/ 5 said innumerable charming
ladies to me with a most engaging vehemence, "a week
in Boston, a day in Philadelphia, a football-match, and
a week-end on Long Island, and you Britishers think
you know America."

"No one can know America," said innumerable
charming ladies to me, "unless they have seen Atlanta,
Georgia," or it may have been Charleston, South Caro
lina, or Seattle, or the Golden Gate at San Francisco,
or Wisconsin, or Martha s Vineyard, or any one of five
hundred places each of which seemed to be at least a
thousand miles from any of the others. But after a bit
I began to get the different attractions classified into
sections. Thus in Section One there were five that
"of course you will be going to see, Mr. Macdonell."
These were New Orleans, Washington, The Century
of Progress Exposition at Chicago, the Grand Canyon
of the Colorado River, and the top of the Empire
State Building. Whenever Section One was broached,
I set my teeth and smiled a sort of smile and swallowed
the burning words that I longed to speak, and nodded
and said, "Oh, of course I shall be going there," and
at last I swore a great and binding oath that I would
not visit New Orleans, or Washington, or the Century
of Progress Exposition at Chicago, or the Grand Can-

68 A VISIT TO AMERICA

yon of the Colorado River, or the top of the Empire
State Building. Nor did I. The oath was truly
kept.

In Section Two came the large towns of the Union,
and the advocates of this section tried to make me be
lieve that I would learn about America by visiting
Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Buffalo, Detroit,
St. Louis, Kansas City, Rochester, Milwaukee, Cincin
nati, and a score of others. But when I enquired in
respect of what quality any of these towns was differ
ent from any other no one could answer. And when I
enquired in respect of what quality any of these beastly
new American industrial towns differed from any of
our beastly new European industrial towns, again no
one could answer. So I, who have seen England s
Sheffield, Scotland s Glasgow, France s Lille, Ger
many s Essen, Italy s Turin, and many another abom
inable mass of chimneys and slums and hurrying,
mean-faced humanity, drew a pencil through the
whole of Section Two.

Section Three was much more difficult to deal with,
as it was composed of the home-towns either of the
people I met at parties, or of the grandfathers or aunts
or cousins of the people I met at parties. Thus I was
incessantly being called upon to assess in my mind the
comparative merits of such places as Burlington, Iowa,
Evansville, Indiana, Peoria, Illinois, and Guthrie, Okla
homa. I was given to understand that I had only to set
foot in any of them and the town would stop work for
the duration of my visit. But it was too difficult to

A VISIT TO AMERICA 69

choose from so many, and in the end I had reluctantly
to eliminate Section Three.

The Itinerary in Section Four was entirely guided
by the letters of introduction with which I was show
ered in New York. From a study of the august names
upon the envelopes of these letters, it appeared that
there was no necessity for me to associate on my travels
with anyone beneath the rank of a State Governor or
the President of a University. Section Four, therefore,
was torn up at once, and when I set out at last from
New York it was on an Itinerary of my own, combined
and dovetailed with three other Itineraries drawn up
by the three gentlemen to whom this book is dedicated.

If the Viscount Howe had taken as much trouble
over his staff -work when he set out from New York in
1777, he might have obtained more successful results
against General Washington.

But before I actually set out on the Grand Tour, I
made one small excursion out of New York, to get
acclimatized, so to speak, to the atmosphere of the
countryside.

My objective was the country near Westport, Con
necticut, and I managed to choose a pouring wet day
for the excursion. Friends came for me with an
automobile, and we drove out through Harlem and
the Bronx, which seemed even drearier than ever in
the rain, and past a jumble of shacks and sheds and
filling-stations, and out on to a great broad road
through dripping woods. The scenery changed quickly
from grand urban to squalid urban, then to suburb and

70 A VISIT TO AMERICA

squalid suburb, then to woodland which is waiting to
be ruined, at a vast number of dollars per acre, by
someone rich enough and beasdy enough to want to
convert lovely woods into loathsome buildings, and
then to richer suburbia, houses standing separately in
small patches of woods, and a bewildering network
of broad concrete roads. After that came the first
beautiful architecture, the real old New England
houses, with their wooden boarding (exacdy as you
will find in the farmhouses in Kent, old England) and
their porches of dainty Greek columns with severe
Doric capitals, and their spotless whitewash and always
green shutters of that lovely dusty green that you find
in Provence and in Cezanne s pictures. They are dig
nified and unflamboyant and simple, and they make
their modern garish neighbours look even more hid
eous that the poor things deserve.

We plugged on through the rain, now passing smart
yacht-clubs on the Sound, now running between sad-
looking stooks of greyish corn in the fields, and stop
ping from time to time for lunch at famous restaur
ants, cafes, and roadhouses, and finding that all were
shuttered, bolted, and barred. The Season was over
and that feeling of damp melancholy had descended
which always makes a fashionable resort, when the
Season is over, a far drearier thing even than a Scottish
moor at twilight, when a mist is creeping up from the
sea and the curlews are crying to each other and there
is no human habitation north, south, west, or east,
for miles and miles and miles. And Gaiety has the
habit of leaving behind it not only the sadness of de-

A VISIT TO AMERICA 71

parted fun but also a great many broken bottles and
old tins.

At last we found a restaurant that was open, a cele
brated house for fish called Clam Allen s, and there I ate
for the first time clam chowder, and then what
seemed to be several hundreds of steamed clams, and
then half a broiled lobster, and then I felt better. Clam
Allen s is a small wooden house so near the edge of the
bay on the Sound that the guest who lunches in the
window looks straight down into the water a yard
below him. Clam Allen s is the fishiest and the most
maritime restaurant I have ever been in. The walls
were decorated with models of sailing-ships and the
steering-wheel of a motor-boat. Over our heads there
was a gallery in which the fishing-nets were stored,
and just outside were the floating tanks for the clams
and lobsters. Beyond the tanks, gulls wailed mourn
fully over the reeds, and the rain fell steadily out of a
grey sky. In the distance across the bay an old stone
barn was faintly visible, looking like the small fortress
of some early settler. But by the time we had reached
the broiled lobster we did not care in the slightest how
hard it rained, or what dirge the seagulls chanted, and
for the rest of my life I shall never understand why a
derogatory sense should be attached to the adjective
"clammy."

The woods above Westport were full of the tinkling
sound of little streams, and the tawny splendour of the
maple leaves was reflected in hundreds of little pools,

72 A VISIT TO AMERICA

and the birch-trees glistened in the rain, and a hot
vapour rose steadily from the sodden moss and the last
year s leaves. Great clumps of what we call in England
Michaelmas Daisies were growing wild on the banks,
and here and there dark outcroppings of rock steamed
in the sultry heat. A grass-hopper with black wings
to help his already efficient legs came leaping past, and
as the sun sank the katy-dids began to tune up their
evening orchestra.

From a hill covered with pines we could see below
us a dark mysterious lake, surrounded with trees to its
very edge and drained by a tiny sluice that murmured
away like the sound of bees. Everything was dark, the
trees and their shadows and their reflection on the
still water, except only a vermilion canoe which lay in
a small clearing on the bank and cast a vermilion pic
ture of itself on to the lake.

Eastward in the distance lay a band of evergreen
trees shutting out the world except at one gap through
which shone the waters of the Sound, with Long
Island dim on the horizon. The Sound was touched
for a moment by a glint from the setting sun, and a
three-masted schooner lay becalmed upon it.

Early next morning I bathed in the dark mysterious
lake and was told afterwards by genial friends that
they were so sorry that they had forgotten to warn
me that it was full of snapping turtles.

CHAPTER FIVE

"City of ships!

(O the black ships! O the fierce ships!
O the beautiful sharp-bow d steam-ships and sail-ships)"

WALT WHITMAN.

IT is one of the peculiarities of the Grand Central Sta
tion in New York City that whereas it is possible to
buy hats, oysters, diamonds, umbrellas, shoes, flowers,
silk-stockings, caviare, and toys under its hospitable
roof, and probably, for all I know, wooden legs as well,
and suspension bridges, artificial teeth, battle cruisers,
and parrots, nevertheless it is almost impossible to find
any trains. The main central hall is rather like a
cathedral. The high roof, the great glass window, the
hushed sound of voices, the shuffle of feet, and the
black porters in their red caps, all give the impression
that here is some oriental mosque, or church in Abys
sinia perhaps, and that at any moment a Patriarch in
gorgeous vestments may appear at the top of the steps
and recite a Coptic benediction. But wait you never so
long you will see nothing more exciting than a notice
predicting that a local train to Bronxville will be
starting at 10.40 A.M., though whence it will be starting
is another matter. The platforms and the trains are
kept carefully hidden from enquiring eyes.

73

74 A VISIT TO AMERICA

It was therefore with no sense of disquiet that I
began my search in the station of the Baltimore and
Ohio Railroad in Forty-second Street for a train that
would take me to Baltimore. The fact that no trains
were visible was not a matter for alarm. It was just a
question of perseverance before I succeeded in running
them to earth, and a guarantee of my ultimate success
was I felt it reasonable to assume, contained in the illu
minated sign outside the station which said "Baltimore
& Ohio Railroad/ and also in the series of advertise
ments in a window in the street which assured the
prospective traveller to Baltimore that something
pretty sensational in the railroad comfort line was
awaiting the lucky fellow.

But when at the end of twenty minutes, these super-
trains were still eluding me, and the whole station was
wrapped in the deepest and most slumberous silence, I
began to get a little anxious, and I accosted an official.
The following dialogue took place:

MYSELF (politely} : Can you tell me, please, where I can
find the 10.30 train to Baltimore ?

OFFICIAL (with old-world courtesy) : The ten-thirty bus,
sir, leaves from the end of that passage which leads into
Forty-first Street.

MYSELF : I fear you mistake my meaning. I refer, not to
a bus, but to the 10.30 train.

OFFICIAL: That s right. 10.30 bus. At the end of that pas
sage.

MYSELF (as one reasoning with a charming but rather
stupid child) : No, no, my good man. The train. Train to

A VISIT TO AMERICA 75

Baltimore. Baltimore, a city on Chesapeake Bay. Metropolis
of Maryland.

OFFICIAL: That s it. Bus.

MYSELF: Train.

OFFICIAL: Bus.

MYSELF: Hell!

I gave it up, consoling myself with the reflection that
a nation which calls a Tram a Trolley-car, Petrol Gas
oline, and a Lift an Elevator, is perfectly capable of call
ing a Train a Bus. I therefore went patiently into a
waiting-room near the end of the now almost famous
passage into Forty-first Street and sat down. After a
few minutes, quite incredibly, a sliding door opened
and there stood a handsome green bus, labelled Balti
more.

I clambered in, settled myself down for a very long
drive, and was soon immersed in a bundle of those
enormous magazines which contain two complete
novels, ten short stories, twenty articles, and a hundred
pages of advertisements, all so inextricably jumbled up
and interwoven one with another that it is quite im
possible to find one s way about. I was just struggling
to disentangle a story of Strong Men on the Frontier
from a grim picture of a Young Woman who was
asking herself "Why did he not kiss me a second time
in the Rose-Garden?" when I became conscious that
the rattling motion of the bus had given place to a
soothing, quiet roll from side to side and, looking up
from that poor tortured face, I found to my astonish
ment that we were now on a ship in the Hudson

76 A VISIT TO AMERICA

River, and apparently laying a course for Europe. By
this time it was lamentably clear that whatever differ
ence of language may conceal the identity of the Tram
and the Trolley, no one could suppose that I, on the
one hand, and, on the other, the Baltimore & Ohio
Railroad Company saw eye to eye on what did, and
what did not, constitute a train. It was possible, of
course, that I was being tactfully deported as an unde
sirable alien, but a sort of Scottish vanity buoyed me
up with the alternative notion that I was going to
make the journey to Baltimore entirely by sea. But in
that case there was little point, from the economic
angle, in carting the whole bus down by sea too. Surely
there must be buses in Maryland that could meet us at
the other end of our voyage; or perhaps there was a
strike of the Maryland bus-drivers; or perhaps but all
these meditations were cut short by the old familiar
view the Downtown skyscrapers. Seen from mid-
river opposite about Thirtieth Street they look like the
outline of a mediaeval fortress, guarding the entrance to
a country as Elsinore guards the Danish Sound and
Bouillon watches the Marches of the Ardennes. In the
sunlight each skyscraper has a little plume of white
steam blowing from the summit, like Everest and its
plume of driven snow.

Our ferry-boat turned a little and made for the New
Jersey coast and soon we were tying up to a Quay. The
bus sprang into life again and, the moment that the
gang plank was down, ran ashore and pulled up beside
what everyone, including myself and the B. & O. Rail-

A VISIT TO AMERICA 77

road Company, would agree was a real honest-to-God
train.

A few minutes later a black man had seized my hat
and put it into a large brown-paper bag, and we were
sliding smoothly through the squalid and tumble-down
suburbs of Jersey City.

Coming from New York to Baltimore, the eye at
once misses, and the neck also, the skyscrapers. There
is only one tall building in the whole city, and it was
somehow with an especial glow of pleasure that one
learnt the story of that tall building. It had been a
bank, and Mammon had raised its towers up to
Heaven just as those other folk who "had brick for
stone, and slime had they for morter, and who said, Go
to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may
reach unto heaven." And when the great Slump came,
the bank with the tall tower was the first of all the
institutions of Baltimore to close its doors and go bank
rupt. On hearing this story I would normally have
laughed a great deal, but I had not been long enough
in Baltimore to compile the list of subjects at which
the foreigner may not laugh in the presence of Balti-
moreans. Later on, I found that in this cheerful city
you may laugh at anything you like, and that the
Baltimorean, as a rule, will not join in your laugh
ter because he will have started to laugh before
you.

Apart from this one tall northern building, the city

78 A VISIT TO AMERICA

is of a southern or European altitude, and I soon found
that this union of North and South is the thread that
runs through every corner of the Baltimorean pattern.
It meets the eye first, naturally, in the architecture. The
high vaunting ambition of the skyscraper is the con
tribution of Manhattan with its passionate desire to be
bigger or more startling or more efficient than any
thing else in the world. The architectural contribu
tion of the South is the supremely beautiful Colonial
style of building which reaches its perfection in Home-
wood, the house of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, just
outside the city. The skyscraper and Homewood, these
are the symbols of the two types of civilization which
meet and mingle in Baltimore, and they spread
through the whole life of the community. Between
them they have made Baltimore a city of bustling com
mercial activity and Beethoven string-quartettes, of oil
refineries and one of the greatest medical schools in the
world, of modern American democracy and of old-
world Cavalier culture, of vast warehouses and of
packs of fox-hounds. Business-men go hustling along,
but they have time to stop for a laugh. The tankers go
chugging down Chesapeake Bay, but if you wait an
hour or two you will see a four-masted ship with dark
red sails go slipping out to the Ocean. Everywhere
there is the mingling of North and South. There is
pride in the past as well as pride in the present, and the
Baltimorean has hit upon the secret, hidden, I think,
to every other State in the Union, of being an aristo
cratic democrat.

A VISIT TO AMERICA 79

Intensely American he is proud of George Calvert.
Fourth among the States to publish its Declaration of
Rights, Maryland prizes much of the English aristo
cratic tradition. For it does not forget that it was no
lantern-jawed Puritan, nor meek Quaker, nor slave-
trader, nor concession hunter, nor illiterate pioneer,
who founded the State of Maryland, but a catholic
Gentleman who had once been Secretary of State in
England, and who, when he had to choose a name for
his foundation, called it after that daughter of Henry,
King of Navarre and France, who became the Queen
of England.

There may be a Washington County at one end of
the State but there is a Queen Anne County at the
other. There is Franklinville, but do not overlook the
town called Princess Anne, and if on one side of the
Patuxent River there is the sturdy, democratic homeli
ness of Mechanicsville, it is balanced on the other side
by the courtly elegance of Prince Fredericktown.

To return to the Carroll house. The stranger, trying
to gain a glimpse into the heart of this gay and sunny
city not for nothing is Baltimore s world-famous
newspaper called The Sun would do well to con
centrate for a while upon Homewood, for it has a
treble importance.

Firstly, it is a sign to all the people of Baltimore that
they need not be worried by the Northerner s obsession
about Antiquity. Nor are they. At their doors stands

So A VISIT TO AMERICA

this perfect example of the architecture of Colonial
times.

Secondly, Homewood has its own individual beauty,
with its old, rose-pink bricks, its two delicately propor
tioned wings and its square, white porch pedimented
and pillared with four Grecian columns that taper
slenderly to simple capitals. Built a hundred years
after Queen Anne, yet it is full of the spirit and line
of the best of Queen Anne, with the colouring of the
earlier Carolean, and the classical touch in the Hellenic
porch.

The third importance of the Carroll house is that it
has served as a model for succeeding generations of
Maryland architects. Elsewhere architects have suc
cumbed to temptation and have built great turreted
and pinnacled chateaux of the French Loire on Long
Island, pseudo-Gothic monstrosities in the streets of
London, and European palaces at New Delhi. But the
men of Baltimore are made of sterner stuff. They have
stuck doggedly to the use of a Maryland model for
Maryland buildings, and not, as you might have ex
pected, the German style of Herr Peter Behrens, or the
Swedish style of Mr. Ostberg, or the London style of
Sir Christopher Wren, or any other imported style.

So you will continually find beautiful examples of
modern Colonial architecture in and around Balti
more, based on the Carroll house. The whole of the
Johns Hopkins University, for instance (which inci
dentally owns Homewood), is built on variations of the
famous model, and there is a residential district in

A VISIT TO AMERICA 8l

which the plans of every new house have to be passed
by a committee of architects who are obviously strong
adherents of the old Colonial. The result is that each
house in this quarter is not only a beautiful modern
building in itself, but is also harmonious with all the
rest. Guilford is a fine example of town-planning as it
ought to be. (Later we shall come to a fine example,
in another city, of town-planning as it ought to be.)

In between the period of the Carroll house and the
modern disciples of Carrolldom come the rows of
small, neat, domestic, Baltimorean houses, made of
brick and seldom more than three storeys high. They
have a queer complacency of their own, which may be
due to their middle-class smugness, or to the dark red
paint with which the brick-work is heavily coated a
decor which is surely unique on such a large scale. For
myself I prefer to think that the sleekness of these little
dwellings is another example of Nature following the
guidance of Art, and that they were not really quite so
complacent, quite so individually sleek, until they
heard that Henry James had written of them as "little
bird-faced and protrusively door-stepped houses,
which, overhung by tall, regular umbrage, suggested
rows of quiet old ladies, with their toes tucked-up in
uniform footstools, under the shaded candlesticks of
old-fashioned tea-parties." After that exquisitely felici
tous picture, no one in his senses will ever try to re-
describe for posterity Baltimore s painted brick houses
and polished door-steps.

The key-point to Baltimore s history is Fort Me-

82 A VISIT TO AMERICA

Henry, a lovely old red brick fort on the point which
dominates the entrance to the inner harbour. The
architect who built Fort McHenry had an eye as keen
for aesthetics as for strategics. The design of the
central part with its white pillars and its dainty hex
agonal powder magazines is almost on a level with the
Carroll house itself. It was here that the British at
tempted to surprise the town in the idiotic war of
1812-1814 (in which neither side knew when the war
began, when it was finished, or what it was all about
anyway) and were repulsed so vigorously that they
forthwith abandoned the attempt to capture Baltimore.
This was the occasion on which Mr. Francis Scott
Key was so elated at the defeat of the Union Jack that
he sat down there and then and composed "The Star-
Spangled Banner." Whether or not the British con
tributed to the poetical advancement of the world, by
providing the inspiration for this composition, is a
matter of opinion. Certainly it might have been better
for both countries if Baltimore had been captured on
that occasion and humanity thus spared such lines as
"Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps pol
lution." But it was not to be. In the picturesque words
of the British General Ross it "rained militia," the
Peninsular veterans were driven back, and Mr. Key s
poetical fancies were loosed upon the world. Baltimore
itself has provided a comment which I, as a stranger,
would never have dared to make. For a tall flagstaff
marks the fatal spot where the Muse descended upon
Mr. Key^ and the Baltimoreans have erected a large

A VISIT TO AMERICA 83

bronze statue, either of Apollo or of Orpheus I am
not sure which with his back ostentatiously turned to
the flagstaff.

The view from Fort McHenry is superb. All the
long reach of Chesapeake Bay stretches out before you
with its wooded shores that fade their thin, dark out
lines into the haze of the Atlantic. In the far distance
you can see the outline of the island which the greatest
of American soldiers and gentlemen, then plain Col
onel R. E. Lee of the United States Engineers, made
into a fort. Beyond that are the fairy-like cranes and
towers and spidery derricks of steel-works. The water
of the bay is dotted with craft. Ferry-boats and tugs
potter about busily. Oil-tankers strike the note of
Modernity, while Antiquity is served by barquentines
plying gracefully along, as the clippers used to ply
that brought glory and wealth to Baltimore and
carried grain to Europe. And if you are lucky you may
see a tiny racing craft go reeling past with all canvas
set, and a nigger perched on each of the eight out
riggers to try to keep the balance. And if you are
luckier still you may see the racing-craft haul up a
shade too closely into the wind, and over she swings
and presto! eight niggers are in the water and nobody
cares a tinker s damn what becomes of them. There
are plenty more where they came from. Indeed there
are plenty of Africans in Baltimore, that City of North
and South, and they are Northern enough in spirit to
possess a certain civic sense and there is enough of the
North in Baltimore to give the negro certain oppor-

84 A VISIT TO AMERICA

trinities for culture and prosperity, and at the same
time they are Southern enough in spirit to be
dominated by the tradition, the not so very old tradi
tion, of slavery, and there is enough of the South in
Baltimore to keep the memory of that domination
alive.

The negro in Baltimore steadily prospers, and like
all sub-races, he steadily eats his way into the residen
tial quarter of the City. Just as the Jew pushes the
Gentile, so the negro pushes the Jew. Harlem Square,
that beautiful open square with the fine old houses all
round, is entirely black now, and there are strong
stone synagogues left isolated, like rocks in an advanc
ing tide of darkness, in streets where neither American
nor European nor Asiatic now dwells.

But not all the Africans live in large handsome
houses. The negro slums, only a yard or two from the
active, cheerful centre of the City, have to be seen to be
believed. Leeds and Wolverhampton and Sheffield, in
dustrial towns of England, have nothing to compare
with these foul alley-ways, often less than a yard wide,
with their wooden shacks jammed back to back
against each other, and the tiny lanes of wretchedly
made bricks that crumble before your eyes. If you
waited for an hour in front of one of these brick
hovels, if you could stand the smell and the atmosphere
of venerable garbage, and the dreary, scavenging cats, I
swear you would see a brick fall out of a wall, or a
door-lintel crumble into dust or a window frame sag
under its own weight. Sometimes one of the cracked

A VISIT TO AMERICA 85

and peeling doors is open and, as you pass, a great cloud
of vapour, partly the smell of cooking and partly the
odour of long decay, human and material, strikes you
in the face. On the floor of the room, if you have the
moral courage and the physical insensibility to pause
and look, half a dozen negroes are playing cards with
a pack that was once white and now is as dingy and
crumpled as themselves. Or they may be throwing
dice with strange and wonderful exhortations to the
dice and imprecations to Fortune. But whatever they
are doing, you may be sure that the floor space is fully
covered by the half reclining, elbow-resting forms. In
a room six feet by six, half a dozen negroes will some
how find the space to twist the pasteboard or roll the
ivory.

And round the corner is the hurrying, gay, sunny
City, the Commercial, the Cavalier.

I am not concerned in this book in writing about
historical events nor in writing about great public
buildings, whether in Baltimore or anywhere else, and
in any case Karl Baedeker would describe them with a
far greater accuracy and in a more concise language.
So I will say nothing of the great square Hall of the
War Memorial, surely ranking with the War Memo
rials in Edinburgh and Winchester College and Char
terhouse School for stateliness and grandeur, nor of the
frescoes round its walls by the painters of Maryland,
nor of the dark shot-tower behind it, nor of the Enoch
Pratt Library, nor the Washington Column, nor even
the Johns Hopkins University.

86 A VISIT TO AMERICA

I am much less interested in the handsome new
Pennsylvania Railroad Station and the huge project of
electrifying the whole track from New York to Wash
ington, than in the shadowy little Calvert Station, the
oldest station in the United States, obscure and dilapi
dated, to which Abraham Lincoln came from his home
in Illinois on his way to Washington to be inaugurated
as President of the United States. He was not liked in
Maryland in those days, and the legend runs that he
arrived disguised as a woman to avoid being pelted by
the mob while he changed from the Illinois train to the
Washington train.

There are many fine shops in Baltimore, but I prefer
the tiny place in which you can buy a glass-eye, choos
ing your own colour, for ten dollars, or the window
which proudly announces that in the premises behind
it you will find the World s Master Craftsman in
Memory Stones. A few yards from the Craftsman is
the office of the Grand Sachem of the Maryland Im
proved Order of Red Men, whatever in the name of
wonder that means, and everywhere there are small
tailors and small pawnbrokers. These are without
question the two main industries of Baltimore.

Every little street is full of them, and there is a
magnificent opening here for a series of vaudeville
jokes on the ancient theme of pawning the Sunday
trousers. Perhaps each tailor is also a pawnbroker or
vice versa, and re-sells as new, in the one establish
ment, the trousers which a client has failed to redeem
in the other. This, if true, would be a remarkable, in-

A VISIT TO AMERICA 87

deed probably unique, example of the Vertical Trust.
And if not true, I gladly make a present of the idea to
the tailors, or the pawnbrokers, or both, of the City of
Baltimore.

Then there are the Churches. The place is full of
them, of every denomination from Catholic down to,
or up to, depending on which you belong to, the Afri
can Methodist Episcopal. One of the splendid legacies
of George Calvert, first Baron Baltimore, was the tradi
tion of Religious Toleration within the Christian Reli
gion, and it is a legacy which Maryland has treasured
for three hundred years. I say advisedly "within the
Christian Religion," because if you talk of this Mary
land tradition of Toleration to a Jew, the mildest reply
he is likely to make is, "What toleration?" But, with
out taking one side or the other in that sort of con
troversy, I make no question that Maryland was far
ahead of England, and is still centuries ahead of some
parts of Europe, in its broad-minded spirit towards the
different sects which claim to be the one true Christian
Religion. From time immemorial each Christian man
and woman has worshipped in Maryland as each
Christian man and woman has wanted to. In conse
quence there are hundreds of Churches in Baltimore,
and the Spirit of Toleration has even spread to the
ecclesiastical architecture, which is almost sensationally
variegated. The City must have been submerged by
wave after wave of architectural fashion, and, to make
it worse, the waves do not seem to have arrived in
strict chronological order. In Europe it is quite com-

88 A VISIT TO AMERICA

mon to see a church in which Norman has succeeded
Saxon, and Perpendicular has been grafted on to Nor
man. But it is not nearly so common to see a church
in which Hellenism has been added to Victorianism
and a touch of Romanesque thrown in afterwards, and
the whole thing topped off with a Cubist roof. In Bal
timore the waves have been very capricious, and a pas
sionate desire to swim on the crest of each fashionable
wave has played Old Harry with the finances of the
faithful. For if a church has just completed, with the
help of a first and second mortgage and perhaps a
small bond issue, a magnificent House of Worship on
the model of the Temple to Pallas Athene in Athens,
it is naturally rather a tricky financial operation to go
into the money-market within a month or two to raise
funds to tear down and replace it with a Byzantine
fane on the lines of the Mosque of the Holy Wisdom
in Constantinople. In the days of the grand boom, the
operation was, perhaps, just possible. But when Depres
sion hit the country, it became utterly impossible, and
the outskirts of Baltimore are littered with classical
apses that only lack a roof, a nave, a chancel, and an
aisle or two, and perhaps a west front, to make a very
handsome church, or with lonely Romanesque basilicas
that are sad reminders, probably, of the failure of a
bond issue in the era of the Romanesque, or pre-Classi-
cal, wave.

But there is more art in Baltimore than is concealed
in half-finished churches. There is, for instance, the
staggering collection of the Walters family which has

A VISIT TO AMERICA 89

been presented to the City. It must have been the big
gest private collection in the world, and it must contain
more real, genuine, honest-to-God junk than any ten
other private collections. Not that there is not some
glorious stuff in it. The stained glass windows from
the Cathedral at Sens, the ninth-century ivories, the
alabaster figurines, the jewels, the enamels from
Limoges, and scores of other treasures, are flawless mas
terpieces. But when Mr. Walters died, it was found
that, in addition to his famous collection, there were
still 243 unopened packing cases in the cellars, and then
the junk began to tumble out. There are at present
about a thousand pictures in the cellars for which there
is no room in the galleries above. It would have taken
a very long time even to glance at the entire thousand,
but a random selection here and there gave me the
impression that about one in seven was definitely inter
esting, that two of the other six were pleasant medioc
rities, and that the rest would have made Landseer look
like a genius. But even if all the junk was thrown aside
and, to judge from the learning and connoisseur-
ship of the Curator and his assistants, it will be thrown
aside pretty quickly and firmly enough will be left
to make the Walters Museum one of the most impor
tant in the United States.

There are many things to be recorded of Baltimore,
and they have been recorded, without a doubt, in the
books. There is, for instance, the quiet bourgeoise lady,

po A VISIT TO AMERICA

Elizabeth Patterson, who brought down upon her head
the whole wrath of the Great Emperor Napoleon him
self because she married Lieutenant Jerome Bonaparte
of the Franch Navy, and Jerome was required for a
more important destiny. In fact the Kingdom of West
phalia was to be created especially for him, and the
man who had himself taken a Creole to wife and
crowned her Empress of the French, suddenly drew the
line, rather illogically, at. crowning a Baltimorean
Queen of Westphalia.

Then there is the fox-hunting tradition of England
which survives to this day in the many packs of hounds
in Maryland. Outside Baltimore, the club-house of the
Elkridge-Harford Hounds is the relic of ancient Ken
nels, though I am bound to admit that after experienc
ing some of the characteristic hospitality of the neigh
bourhood I was uncertain whether it was foxes or elks
which had been hunted in the old days, and whether
I was expected to shout "Fore" or "Hark For ard" on
the course itself. It was on this golf-course that I first
encountered the Southern Tact which is so famous all
over the world. After I had played an unexpectedly
skillful stroke with a niblick or what not, my caddie
asked me, with a bland innocence, if I was a member
of the British Walker Cup Team. That left nothing
for me to do but to hand him a dollar without a word
and proceed with the game.

In the Museum there is a portrait of Ross Winans
who went from Baltimore long ago to work in Russia
for the Tsars and came back to Baltimore again, and
one of Thorowgood Smith, the second Mayor of the

A VISIT TO AMERICA 91

City, in all the glory of his own invented eye-glasses-
two lenses dangling from a black silk ribbon tied
round his forehead and a picture of the race-course
at Pimlico, sudden echo of a small and squalid corner
of London.

If you wander in the street markets you will find
a mass of colour, piled up heaps of apples and
melons and tomatoes and bananas and scarlet chilis
and corn and persimmon-coloured gourds, as gay as
the old tradition of the cavaliers, and if you go up
the street of the ships captains on to the top of Fed
eral Hill you will see on the one side as far as the
island that Lee fortified and on the other to the enor
mous white buildings of the mail-order store miles
away to the inland. If you explore long enough you
will find Fleet Street and Thames Street and Shake
speare Street, twisting along near each other, and be
side the narrow Pothouse Alley there is an old grey
stone building that must have given the name to the
Alley, for it was once the coaching-inn on the road
from Baltimore to the rich farming district of Belair,
the road down which the grain-waggons came thun
dering to the sea and the waiting clippers.

In Miller s Restaurant you will find the gigantic
oysters of Chesapeake Bay. I had never seen any oyster
to equal in size, even remotely, the Blue Point, the
Chincoteague, the Georgia Island, but I was assured
that this was just the beginning of the season and that
they were diminutive fellows compared to the later
varieties.

But the most romantic part to me at any rate, of Bal-

92 A VISIT TO AMERICA

timore was the street down at the harbour, along the
wharf. There were ships advertised to sail for the
"Dismal Swamps, for Tolchester, Ocean City, and Re-
hoboth Beach" (what a beautiful combination of
Rome, Modernity, and the Bible); for the "Eastern
Shores of Maryland and Delaware"; for travel by Rock
Creek Line to Fort Small wood and Fairview Beach;
for a "Moonlight Trip to Love Point Ferry" (and it
would be a dullard who could not make progress with
his lady on such a magical voyage to such a magical
place) and to those enchanted rivers the Annamessex,
the Potomac, the Rappahannock, the Patuxent, and
glory of glories the Piankatank. What a name
Piankatank! Probably some damned scholar can prove
in a jiffy that it is the Indian word for Stinking-Bison
Gulch or something of the sort, but to me, as I stood
and watched the carts drawn by the gaily harnessed
mules rattling up the wharves, the river Piankatank
seemed the far-off edge of Atlantis or Lodore.

No wonder that Walt Whitman got excited when
he thought about the place names of the Red Indians.
Was there ever a lovelier name than Shenandoah or
Missouri? They are almost the sole legacy of that un
fortunate race. A hundred years ago they were lords
of the prairie and the range. Now all that is left of
them is a few arrowheads of jade and obsidian and
carnelian and agate, and a large body of stories for the
delight of schoolboys, and a handful of survivors on
the Reservations and these lovely names, and nothing
more.

A VISIT TO AMERICA 93

When I read the name of the Piankatank River, I
thought of Whitman s verse about the red aborigines,
and though I am not going to pretend that I could
recite it word for word as I stood there on the wharf,
yet at least I remembered where to find it, and had
enough energy to look it up when I got home.

The red aborigines.,

Leaving natural breaths, sounds of rain and winds, calls as
of birds and animals in the woods, syllabled to us for
names

Okonee, Koosa, Ottawa, Monongahela, Sauk, Natchez,
Chattahoochee, Kaqueta, Oronoco,

Wabash, Miami, Saginaw, Chippewa, Oshkosh, Walla-
Walla,

Leaving such to the States they melt, they depart, charging
the water and the land with names.

Well, that is Baltimore as I saw it, the City of Mary
land, the City of North and of South, of colour and
laughter and sun and romance. As my train steamed
out of the Pennsylvania Station, the sun was setting
over Maryland in a splendour of black and gold, the
heraldic colours of the family of Calvert.

CHAPTER SIX

"They shall fully enjoy materialism and the sight of products, they shall
enjoy the sight of beef, lumber, breadstuff s, of Chicago, the great city."

WALT WHITMAN.

IT was an old-standing resolution of mine that if ever
I went to Chicago, I would not refer in speech,
thought, or deed to the existence of gangsters and gun
men. I would be the first citizen from Europe to re
frain from making wan, feeble, near-witticisms about
armoured cars and Al Capone, and in so refraining I
would earn the everlasting gratitude of the inhabitants
of the second city of the United States. For fourteen
years or more thexChicagoans, whether in Chicago or
in any other part of the world, have had to put up
with the everlasting cackle of people asking, "Are the
streets really swept with machine-gun fire every hour
or two?" and "Is it true that everyone wears bullet
proof waistcoats, even with evening-dress ?" and "How
is it that anyone survives at all?" so that by this time
they may be excused a sigh when they see a European
heave in sight over the horizon. For a European over
the horizon means the same old catechism. Now the
Chicagoan has a great command of good manners.
With every excuse to slug his guest behind the ear, or
sock him on the jaw, he controls himself, smiles as

94

A VISIT TO AMERICA 95

gaily as he can under the circumstances, and murmurs,
"Oh, well, you know," or some such non-committal
remark. The sort of thing he might have said, if his
native courtesy had deserted him for a moment, was
this:

"Of course there have been murders. What can you
expect when our Prohibitionists handed a thousand
million dollars on a plate to be fought for by the
lowest dregs of Ireland, the lowest dregs of southern
Italy? That reminds me," he might go on, pensively.
"Am I wrong in fancying that somehow or other I
seem to have heard of a murder or two in old Ireland
itself? And that the Mafia in Sicily and the Camorra
in- Naples have not pursued their activities entirely in
white kid gloves? And is it completely safe in Ger
many to stand up and say how greatly you dislike the
face of Herr Goring, or in Russia to express in public
your heartfelt conviction that Comrade Stalin is a
crook, a morphine-maniac, and a spy in the pay of the
Grand Duke Cyril?" To all of which it is extremely
difficult for the haughty European to find a reply.

There is no doubt that American films and Chicago
newspapers have played their part in creating this idea
that Wabash Avenue at its busiest hour is pretty much
the same as a good average day s skirmishing in the
Forest of the Argonne during the summer of 1918.
But, whatever my European confreres had done, I was
determined to ignore the lessons of the American film
and the captions of the Chicago newspapers.

96 A VISIT TO AMERICA

The Twentieth Century Express pulled out of the
pitch-darkness of the Grand Central Station (for at
last I found a train in the crypt of the mighty cathe
dral), across the Harlem and into the red glow of a
sunset which made upper Manhattan look almost at
tractive, and rolled past factories, past engine-sheds in
which rows of strong, black, electric locomotives stood
waiting for work, past the huge squat silhouette of the
Polo Grounds and so out towards the open country of
New York State. Bridge after bridge spanned the
river, all steel and each of a different pattern. On the
river the little tugs hauled away for dear life and the
barges, green, blue, red, yellow, threw their long
shadows on the water as the sun crept downwards be
hind low wooded scarps on the western bank. The
scarps on the other side rose into higher, rockier, more
jagged edges, but on our side there were still factories,
ship-building yards, piles of stacked timber, a ware
house or two, and once a power station whose four tall
chimneys were very like the four chimneys of the Lot s
Road Power Station on the Thames in London.

For mile after mile it was the same, the west bank
changing in the twilight from one loveliness to an
other, the east from one hideousness to another. We
passed close to raw red and yellow brick factories that
had been built right out into the water as if in delib
erate challenge to the Hudson River. It was as if the
vandals had said, "We will not only ruin your bank,
but we will ruin you as well." Sometimes the loath
some buildings would be varied with a nice little

A VISIT TO AMERICA 97

dump of rusty tins half in and half out of the water,
and sometimes with rusty tins that were not even
collected into a dump, but looked as if they had been
sown by a sower who had some notion of amass
ing a million dollars by raising a crop of nourishing
foods of fifty-seven different varieties in a single field.
And sometimes, instead of being red and yellow, the
factory would be black, and sometimes there were high
gaunt frames of iron that may have been anything in
the world for all I know.

But on the western bank there were no signs of
human progress. The rocky, serrated cliff rose steadily
and turned gradually into a high bluff, with a level
silhouette against the sky, and the woods began again
and grew denser and denser until they came at last
right down to the river s edge and were reflected with
a dark steady reflection in the shadowy water. The sun
had gone down behind the bluff, but once or twice
there must have been a narrow cleft in the steep hill
side, for a shaft of gold suddenly struck the water for
a moment and then vanished in the above-coloured
twilight that was so quickly falling. The unrippled sur
faces of the river and the bluff were now all the same
colour, a pearly grey, or was it a ghostly blue, or a lu
minous mother-of-pearl, or oyster-shell or the colour of
the feathers of a pigeon ? I do not know. It was inde
scribable except that it was beautiful. It changed im
perceptibly all the time. Along the level silhouette of
the bluff, where the edge of the Earth faded into space,
there was a faint line of pale yellow. A small yacht

90 A VISIT TO AMERICA

went slowly down the stream, and a five-masted barque
lay at anchor. Here and there a solitary fisherman was
snatching the last minutes of the day. Darkness closed
in. The ghostly grey went into black, and the lights
of diminutive lighthouses began to shine, and I went
off in search of a cocktail. Half an hour later I went
back to the Observation-Car. The moon was at the
full and the blackness which had harried away the
mother-of-pearl had been harried away in its turn, and
the river was a sheet of silver. At last we had out-run
our chimneys and tins, and the east bank was a mass of
reeds on a flat marshy stretch of land. To the west, the
moon shone upon ridge after ridge of wooded hills.

By the time we had finished dinner, the train was
lying motionless, high up athwart the town of Albany.
Below us were the lights and the street-cars and the
automobiles and the neon-signs of the cinemas. In the
station it was dark, and the outline of the huge, silent
train against the stars was like a symbol of the Machine-
Age above a clattering and chattering of mortals.

I woke up next morning to find that we were run
ning along the shore of Lake Michigan, and in a mo
ment we were passing the town of Gary, Indiana, and
I could see that the new world has nothing to learn
from the old world in the art of making a beautiful
place hideous. The chimneys and the smoke and the
buildings and the ghastliness, against the background
of the Lake, are on the approved model.

Gary, I believe, is called after a steel-magnate named
Judge Gary, and I presume the adjective "garish" is

A VISIT TO AMERICA 99

also from that derivation. And if it was originally
coined to describe the town, or the Judge either for
that matter, it has acquired an altogether erroneous
mildness of meaning. I could put a great many
stronger meanings to the word, and yet fall short of
my opinion of both.

We passed Gary without stopping so at least we
were spared something and came to Chicago,

Alas for resolutions ! Something always conspires to
bring them to the ground. Mine went the way of the
rest not, I think, through any fault of mine, but rather
through a combination of circumstances. I arrived in
Chicago, repeating to myself over and over again,
"There are no gangsters here, and even if there are,
they are no concern of mine." It was a cold day. A
northeast wind was blowing off the Lake and gusts
of mist kept blowing in from that fresh-water ocean.
I was not feeling very well after the concentrated hos
pitality of New York and Baltimore. I presented two
of my letters of introduction and both of my prospec
tive victims were away from home. (It occurs to me
that perhaps, after the cruel description of a Chicago
hostess by a distinguished English lady-novelist not so
long ago, all hostesses in and around Chicago now
make a point of leaving home when visiting authors
arrive. They certainly have every justification for doing
so, after that unfortunate display of manners.)

So there I was. Tired, jaded, alone in a gigantic city,

100 A VISIT TO AMERICA

cold, and with nothing more attractive to do than to
play the game by my publishers and walk around the
streets collecting material for this book. And there are
few things so unattractive in this world except, of
course, to the true-blue Englishman as playing the
game by anyone, especially a publisher. However there
was nothing for it, so out I went after luncheon, and
began.

It was an unfortunate experience. The afternoon
grew colder, the mist grew thicker, and I grew wearier.
Everyone seemed to be in a tremendous hurry, scuttling
hither and thither like an industrious rabbit. By com
parison New York was a city of loungers, of idle,
strolling, dilettanti, taking the air on Fifth Avenue
under the doctor s orders. The rushing and the jostling
and the bustling in Chicago were quite bewildering.
And there was the dust and the grime. From the soot-
clouds and the smoke-palls of London it is a far cry
to the steam-heated, electric-locomotived, clean atmos
phere of Manhattan. But Chicago is at least a third of
the way back to London. The grime is beastly and the
noise is appalling. Standing in Wabash Avenue when
the street-cars and the Elevated were in full swing, I
felt that I had heard nothing like it since the old days
of field-gun barrages. Fulton Street, Brooklyn, seemed
in my recollection to be the sort of place where
shepherds piped to their flocks, and the lambkins gam
bolled in the rustic scene. To make it worse, and more
painfully realistic, the metal connections between the
street-cars and their overhead wires were very faulty

A VISIT TO AMERICA 101

and there was an incessant spluttering of bangs and
cracks, and an incessant flashing of blue flames in the
air, as the hideous contraptions bell-clanged and
wheel-screeched along. But I was resolved not to give
in. Tired, nervous, cold, dusty, jerking into the air at
each bang and cowering at each blue flame, neverthe
less I kept on down Wabash Avenue with all the
dogged tenacity of the sons of Britain, muttering to
myself: "It s quite all right. It is not gangsters. It is
only a street-car. Not gangsters at all. Only a street
car."

It was about half -past five in the evening. Darknesss
had fallen, and the shops were shutting and the crowds
in the street were greater than ever, and the people were
moving faster than ever, the automobiles slower than
ever. Suddenly I was pushed aside even more ruth
lessly than usual. I turned to whimper a faint protest
and saw that my jostler was a big, clean-shaven, iron-
jawed policeman. He had just come out of a big De
partment Store and in his left hand he was carrying a
sack, sealed and tied^ and in his right a pistol that
looked, to my fevered imagination, about the size of a
medium-sized rifle. He was followed closely by a sec
ond policeman, also big, also clean-shaven, also iron-
jawed, and he too carried what looked like a medium-
sized rifle in each hand. Both were covered with car
tridge-belts and bedecked with holsters. They strode
across the sidewalk and jumped into an armoured-car
that was cruising along slowly beside the curb. It was
the last straw. I sprang into a taxi, drove back to the

102 A VISIT TO AMERICA

Palmer House, and locked myself into my room with a
bottle of whisky and a small modicum of soda-water,
and when I had drunk the lot I went to bed.

There are two separate and distinct parts of Chicago.
One is Michigan Boulevard, and the other is all the
rest The Boulevard is a truly magnificent street. The
rest of Chicago is hideous. The Boulevard is broad,
clean, spacious. The skyscrapers, though more ornate
than the best of New York s, stand in a long, splendid
line that almost rivals Manhattan, and cool dry breezes
blow from Lake Michigan. The automobiles go bowl
ing up and down in endless procession, and there is a
feeling in the air of dignity and grandeur, coupled
with a vast civic pride. I heard even a traffic policeman
singing cheerfully to himself as he stood at his post.
"Here is a street," you say as you look at Michigan
Boulevard, "that is worthy of the second city of a great
country, a city that is proud of itself, of its universities
and its law schools, its parks and gardens, its libraries
and its art galleries, its music and its schools of medi
cine, its museums and its aquarium and its planetarium
and its science."

"Here," you say to yourself, "is a city that in a hun
dred years has acquired something of the civic spirit
of Athens in the days of Pericles. Pheidias would not
have despised it, nor would Aristotle have scorned to
walk in its gardens.

That is Michigan Boulevard and all that it stands

A VISIT TO AMERICA 103

for. Now look at the other part of this, the second city
of a great country. A few yards from the Boulevard,
you plunge into narrow, dirty, noisy streets. Wabash
Avenue and State Street are the best of them, and they
are bad enough. But at least they are well-paved and
well-lit at night. But if you go past them and push
steadily south, that is to say parallel to the lake, and
keep on bearing westerly, or inland, in a moment or
two you are in dingy slums. The streets are full of
holes; the houses are small, shabby, and sordid; the
shops, miserable and uninviting. The atmosphere seems
to give the impression that the drainage system is not
what it might be, and at night the lamps are few and
far between. It is possible to walk in two minutes
from a brilliantly lit thoroughfare into a district of
utter darkness, where there is hardly an automobile and
where the few pedestrians seem to shuffle past furtively
and in dread. These mean streets are seldom labelled
with their names, and there is an utter absence of any
thing that could be remotely described as civic pride.
The whole place looks like a disreputable alley-cat that
only hopes that no one will pay any attention to it while
it slinks from garbage-tin to garbage-tin. Further
south, again, there is a long street called Prairie Avenue
which might be a street in a town in Poland in the
nineteenth century a year or two after a war has passed
by. Here and there are solid, well-built houses, but the
rest are small and decaying, and there are almost as
many patches of open, unbuilt ground as there are
houses. These empty spaces are covered with rank

104 A VISIT TO AMERICA

grass., weeds, old bricks, bottles, bits of derelict machin
ery, old fragments of corrugated iron, and, of course,
the inevitable crop of rusty tins. Long, straggly grasses
grow between the rough paving-stones of Prairie Ave
nue, in the second city of a great country, and wave
forlornly in the light breezes. It is a dismal place.

Even more dismal, though at the other end of the
social scale, is the northern end of Chicago. I drove out
to it on a day of torrential rain. The first incident in
this pilgrimage in this centre of commerce and hustle,
was a seven-minute halt while a small boat went slowly
down the Chicago River to the Lake, and the bridge
was hoisted up to let it pass. There are, I think, eight
bridges between Franklin Street and the Lake, and
presumably the traffic at each of them was held up for
seven minutes by this funny little boat. It was rather a
busy time of the day, and before the bridge was down
again there was a jam of motor-cars on the Boulevard
that seemed to reach as far as the Stevens Hotel. I al
ways thought that the level-crossings in the ancient City
of Lincoln, in England, held the record for time-wast
ing, but Chicago has got Lincoln beaten hollow.

The next landmark was the Wrigley Building. The
only thing that need be said about it is that it is not
so ugly as the sight of a man or woman actually chew
ing the stuff. There is something about that monoto
nous champ, champ, champ, that painful working of
the lower jaw, and that unwinking vacuity of expres
sion which always seems to go with the habit, that fills
the beholder with rage mingled with a certain admira-

A VISIT TO AMERICA 105

tion. The rage is because such ugliness as the face of a
gum-chewer can exist in the world, and the admiration
is for Mr. Wrigley who, when God has created Man in
His own image, can so easily reduce him to the image
of a cow.

I saw an advertisement in a train in America I can
not remember where which ran as follows: "Wrig-
ley s is the finishing touch to a good meal." And by
Heavens! that advertisement is right. Wrigley s is the
finishing touch to any meal, however good.

After the Wrigley Building we arrived at a really
remarkable edifice. It was a tower, built of large,
square, yellow stones, and designed with a hideousness
that was almost frightening. It stood in the middle of
the street, all by itself, and looked like a tower that had
been built by a maniac with the express purpose in his
loyal but befuddled mind of pleasing Queen Victoria.
Had it been constructed of Scottish granite and deco
rated here and there with tartan, primroses, and a few
stags antlers, that tower would have fitted tolerably
well into the landscape around Balmoral Castle. I was
told that it was the only building that survived the
Great Fire of 1871, and could think of nothing to say
except "Why?"

By the time we had got over the shock of this aston
ishing Tower, we were spinning through the beautiful
Lincoln Park, and after that we came to a scene that
was very characteristic of Chicago. On our left there
were huge luxury hotels and blocks of apartments and
big private houses, on our right an expanse of dismal

106 A VISIT TO AMERICA

mud-flats stretching to the Lake, luxury on one side
and mud on the other.

But there is no mud-flat to mar the residential suburb
of Evanston. Sheridan Road seems to run for miles
between neat, stone, private houses, standing well back
from the road and each one surrounded by trees. It is
almost like a town in a forest. There must be thousands
of these quietly solid houses, and the architecture of
them is a positive triumph of imagination. For every
single one is different in style to all the rest. Evanston
is the exact antithesis of Guilford at Baltimore. Guil-
ford was town-planned and built in general harmony
with the Carroll house. Evanston has not been planned,
and it is built in general harmony with nothing. It is a
fine example of what the famous Rugged Individual
ism is really capable of when it gets among the Arts.
And the extraordinary thing about the architecture of
these Evanston houses is that although there must be
about ten thousand separate and different specimens
of how to build a private residence, not a single one is
anything but ugly. In no single case has an architect,
desperately searching round in his mind for a new and
original pattern, happened to hit upon a beautiful one.
It might have been thought that out of all those thou
sands, one might have been lovely by accident. But no.
All are revolting.

The rain poured steadily down as we drove further
and further into the heart of this architectural night
mare, and it became increasingly clear that residential
Evanston is no stronger on drainage than some of those

A VISIT TO AMERICA IOJ

dark little streets in Chicago s slum-land. A small
booklet entitled "Chicago Welcomes You" lays empha
sis, among the many attractions of the city which the
visitor ought not on any account to miss, upon the
Drainage Canal in the neighbourhood. I saw few signs
of the results of its work. As the afternoon advanced,
the roads were dotted with huge puddles of standing
water, and any small slope was like a river, while the
football-grounds and lawn-tennis courts of Northwest
ern University were under water.

Very few cities have ever had such an opportunity
for creating a masterpiece of the art of Town-Planning
as Chicago. The Fire gave the City Fathers a clean sheet
on which to work, and the unique advantage of the
site, being the natural junction of the railroads and
the lake-borne traffic, soon provided fabulous wealth
for the rebuilding. Yet, in spite of these gifts, the busi
ness was sadly bungled and all that Chicago can show
of magnificence is a single street. The rest is melan
choly.

There was one place in which I found a meeting of
the two different spirits of Chicago, the proud spirit of
Civic Responsibility and the spirit of the dismal rest.
Curiously enough they met in a Municipal Police-
Court.

As I wanted to see American Justice in action, I
penetrated into the press-room of the Police-Court and
introduced myself as a London journalist. The room

108 A VISIT TO AMERICA

was exactly as it appears in Hecht and MacArthur s
play "The Front Page." Half a dozen telephones, walls
scrawled over with pencilled obscenities and crude
drawings, a couple of plain tables, a few chairs, a
poker-game with an old crumpled pack of cards, a
man in shirt-sleeves reading a newspaper, and an un
ceasing flow of blasphemy, these were the principal
ingredients in the scene. A young reporter at once
offered to get me a place beside the Judge in any court
I liked, and, sure enough, in about three minutes he
had haled me up to a Judge on his Bench, and, to my
alarm, leant over and attracted the attention of the great
man by tweaking his sleeve in the middle of a speech
by an attorney. I expected a sharp sentence for Con
tempt of Court for both of us, but the Judge turned
round, shook me by the hand, said he was glad to
know me, and that he would be pleased if I made my
self at home on the Bench for as long as I liked. Mean
while the attorney went on thundering unheeded.

The procedure of the Court was very informal. As
each case was called, the witnesses, the defendant, and
the defendant s counsel, came forward and grouped
themselves casually in front of the Bench. It was usu
ally quite impossible to tell which was which, though
it was a pretty safe bet that the most shifty-looking of
the party would turn out to be the defendant s attorney.
The police witness, usually a big, good-looking youth
in a smart blue uniform with brass buttons, and a spot
lessly clean blue shirt and black tie, gave his story first,
and then the fun would start. The defending attorney

A VISIT TO AMERICA 109

would begin an elaborate series of technical objections,
would usually be interrupted by his own client, who
would be passionately contradicted by one of his own
witnesses. Then they would all start shouting together
and quarrelling bitterly among themselves. All this
time Judge X. would sit in his big chair and look at
them and say nothing. Then suddenly he would ask a
question that brought everybody up short, and in a few
minutes he had everything neatly unravelled, a sen
tence delivered, and the whole case finished. The party
in front of the bench would disappear, except for the
defending attorney who would be left alone, shouting
appeals for clemency, protests against injustice, and
accusations of corrupt evidence. During this stentorian
interlude Judge X. would be busy recording his deci
sion upon his calendar, and then he would look up and
say "Go away" in tones of such deadly quietness that
the bluster would suddenly evaporate and the attorney
would retreat in haste.

And so it went on all through the morning. There
was no delay between the cases. Men were charged
with being in possession of guns, of trading in dope,
of owning illegal slot-machines, of failing to pay rent,
or stealing, of assault and battery, of every conceivable
sort of minor villainy, and to each and all Judge X.
listened and listened and listened while he gazed stead
ily at them. A woman explained that her husband,
who had been subpoenaed in a case, could not attend
the Court as he had got a nice lucrative job for the
day.

HO A VISIT TO AMERICA

"Then tell him from me/ said the Judge in a gen
tler tone than ever, "that if he is not here to-morrow at
9.30 A.M., it will be just too bad for him."

An elderly man was found guilty of some petty mis
demeanour and sentenced to five dollars fine and five
dollars costs. With a heavy sigh he picked up a crutch
and stumbled heavily out of the Court. Judge X. turned
to the police sergeant and said, "Has that man got a
wooden leg?"

"Yes 5> Judge."

"I think we ve been a little hard on him. Shall we
make it two and two?"

"Make it one and one, Judge," said the sergeant, and
the Judge nodded.

A flashily dressed youth was charged with stealing
a fire-extinguisher and was found guilty on the clearest
possible evidence. His own story was a mass of con
tradictions and absurdities, and the District Attorney
had no trouble in demolishing it. The sentence was
thirty days in the House of Correction, and the defend
ing lawyer exploded into a tornado of protest. Waving
a half-smoked cigar in the Judge s face, he launched
into an eloquent appeal for clemency. "Thirty days,"
"first offence," "just married," "give the boy a chance,"
"blasting a young life," were the themes on which he
played his noisy variations, and the Court-room rang
with his moral indignation. Judge X. waited patiently
until at last the harangue was over, and then he re
plied: "If you had advised your client to tell the truth,
he would have been put on Probation. I am not sen-

A VISIT TO AMERICA III

tencing him for a stupid little theft. I am sentencing
him because he has forsworn his oath." He then turned
to the youth and delivered a simple and moving little
speech on the sanctity of an oath sworn in Court upon
the Bible, and then the next case was called and the
procession of battered wrecks., dope-addicts, brutal
hooligans, subhuman Africans, smart young embryonic
gangsters, sneak-thieves, petty racketeers, drunkards,
and sweepings of a vast, cosmopolitan city, started
again on its dismal journey.

As I walked home to my hotel, I saw a large adver
tisement on a board which stated that Judge X. was
running for re-election as Judge on November 6th, and
I reflected upon the strange system which makes a
wise and humane Judge dependent upon the votes
of, presumably, the very sort of scum and dregs of
mankind that had been passing before him that
morning.

In the evening I visited a Music Hall in the Loop
and saw a Russian propaganda film, which proved be
yond shadow of doubt that the Five Years Plan was
bound to succeed, that Stalin was the greatest man in
the world, and that Individualism and Capitalism were
utterly doomed. At the end of the film the orchestra
played the lovely old tune "Maryland," which has been
taken by the British Labour Party and re-labelled "The
Red Flag." As I sat in that theatre in the heart of the
greatest capitalist country in the world, I could not
help recalling the rather unfortunate verses which a
perfervid British revolutionary wrote for "The Red

112 A VISIT TO AMERICA

Flag" on the top of a bus in a London traffic jam, and
the stirring lines in which he proclaims that

Look round : the Frenchman loves its blaze.
The sturdy German chants its praise,
In Moscow s vault its hymns are sung,
Chicago swells the surging throng.

The Great Exhibition (called for some reason, per
haps as a delicate if rather belated compliment to the
Marquis de Lafayette, the Exposition) of a Century of
Progress was just coming to an end, but I kept my
oath and did not go to it. I always had an excuse
ready. Once it was a famous English novelist who
was passing through Chicago on her way to lecture
in Mason City, Iowa (the Mason Citizens had "pur
chased" her for an hour and a half, as her lecture
agent so gracefully put it in a letter), and we saun
tered along the Lake and discussed our hosts. And
once it was a young American Novelist with whom I
sat upon a tall stool for many an hour and listened to
the story of Mayor Cermak, the "Martyr," who had
been elected to clean up the City after Big Bill Thomp
son had been busting King George V on the snoot, and
the peculiar circumstances surrounding the purchase by
Chicago of its forest-parks. So what with one thing
and another, I never got to the Exposition. But to judge
from this extract from the Chicago Tribune which de
scribes the scene in the grounds on the last day, it

A VISIT TO AMERICA 113

would appear that, whatever else may have progressed
in the last century., it is not Human Nature:

The riotous merrymakers took possession of the $48,000,-
ooo playground, drank everything in sight except the lake,
and snatched everything movable as souvenirs.

It was a vicious mob-spectacle; men, women and children
crushed into unconsciousness, battling police platoons
whipped back by souvenir hunters in on the "kill," hospital
ambulances screaming through the packed streets.

Thrifty housewives, their children clutching frantically to
their coats, uprooted rare plants and shrubbery and trudged
off triumphandy with their 200 bargain bought with a
fifty-cent piece for admission. The $500,000 horticultural
building was almost denuded.

If a sign remains along the eighty-three miles of streets
and concessions, thank faulty eyesight and the scarcity of
ladders. The street of villages, joy of the 1934 Exposition,
was sacked.

There are also, I believe., some Stock Yards in Chi
cago. I did not visit them, but I was informed of their
existence. Frequently.

CHAPTER SEVEN

"O the farmer s joys!

Ohioan s, Illinoisian s, Wisconsinese , Kanadian s, lowan s, Kansian s, Mis-

sourian s, Oregonese" joys!

To rise at peep of day and pass forth nimbly to work,
To plough land in the fall for winter-sown crops,
To plough land in the spring for maize,
To train orchards, to graft the trees, to gather apples in the fall."

WALT WHITMAN.

THERE are two main routes from Chicago to the west
for the British traveller. The first, and by far the com
monest, is by the Union Pacific direct to San Francisco.
The second is over the Northern Pacific via Minneapo
lis to Seattle and Portland. I therefore decided to take
neither, but to dodge about the country between the
two. Never having heard of any Englishman who has
visited Omaha, save only the wandering lecturer who
sees nothing on his bewildering rushes to and fro but a
sleeping-berth, a luncheon table, and an ocean of faces,
I decided to make that city my first stopping-place
west of Chicago. There was also another reason for
visiting Omaha, a childish one both in the literal and
in the metaphorical sense of the word. Ever since I
was old enough to read the romances of Mr. G. A.
Henty and such stories as "Fifty-two Tales of Wild Life
East and West," I had had a mysterious and inexpli
cable desire to visit Sioux City and Council Bluffs.

114

A VISIT TO AMERICA 115

For years I pored over the rather indifferent map of the
United States with which we were provided at school,
and rolled the romantic names round my infantile
tongue, Rio Grande del Norte and Sacramento and
Great Falls and Savannah and a hundred others ; but I
always came back to Sioux City and Council Bluffs,
with Cheyenne a good third. On this journey to
America there was not time to visit more than one of
them already I was beginning to get some notion
into my head that America is a tolerably large place
and I therefore chose Council Bluffs as the most con
venient for subsequent journeyings.

It was early morning when the Pullman attendant
woke me up, and I peered eagerly out through a thin
grey mist. To any one else there was not much to see.
Brown cliffs rising up from the bed of the Missouri
River, crowned with small straggly willows, or they
may have been birches or ash or aspen for all I know,
and nowhere higher than perhaps a hundred feet. That
was all. But to me it was a flying carpet that took me
back to happy days long ago with wigwams and toma
hawks and cowboy-hats and lariats, deadly ambushes
and chivalric rescues, wild gallops on wooden mustangs
and vast slaughterings of bison that must have seemed
to our poor dull-witted elders to be only logs of wood
from the wood-shed. And there was a day of days,
supremest of all days in that desperate frontier warfare
which swayed from the artichoke-bed to the laurel-
bushes, from the laburnum shrubbery round by the
guelder-roses to the stable-yard, when Buffalo Bill him-

Il6 A VISIT TO AMERICA

self came to our suburb with his real cowboys and his
real redskins, whooping, galloping, firing Winchester
repeaters from the hip, lassoing, picking up handker
chiefs from the ground while riding at full speed, and
swinging down behind the tearing horse so that the
rider was invisible to the lurking marksman. I gazed
in ecstasy through the blurred window and the long-
ago Past came back to me.

Surely that was a gleam of bright feathers among
the trees on Council Bluffs and another, and another.
Feathered head-dresses of the War-Path, and a shaft of
early-morning sun upon the head of a tomahawk, and
a settler s log-cabin, peaceful and unsuspecting, upon
the edge of the Bluffs. . . . The colours dancing in and
out. . . . The raiding-party converging upon the
doomed cabin. . . . Massacre and torture. Death at the
stake. . . . But listen. ... A great shout, and a thunder
of hooves, and a cloud of dust, and the cowboys gallop
ing to the rescue with Colonel Cody himself at their
head, firing a Colt revolver from each hip. The log-
cabin is saved. The redskins disappear. Everything
disappears except the brown wall of the Bluffs and the
stumpy trees, and there is a grinding of brakes and we
have arrived at Omaha.

Omaha is a large, cheerful, modern town. The
streets are wide, and the buildings plain, solid, of a
reasonably low altitude. The people are either busy or
anxious to be busy. There are no idle rich, for the

A VISIT TO AMERICA 117

simple reason that no one who was rich enough to be
idle would live of his own free will in Omaha. It is a
commercial city and nothing else, pleasant enough and
unsophisticated enough, but making no sort of claim
to be a centre of Culture or a Beauty Spot or a Health
Resort.

As in Chicago, the pride of Omaha is the Stock
Yards. But for the wandering traveller there is a big
difference between the two. In Chicago you expect that
everyone will try to drag you out to see the Yards, and
you are prepared accordingly with all the lying excuses
and side-stepping evasions which are so essentially part
of the old-world, courteous politesse of Europe. As a
result you can visit Chicago and blandly baffle every
effort to bully, entice, or kidnap you to an inspection
of the meat-packing establishments of Messrs. Armour
and the rest of them. But at Omaha I was caught off
my guard. I had not known that Omaha possessed
the second biggest Stock Yards of the world, beating
Kansas City by a short head (of cattle, presumably),
and I was taken unawares, and in a moment I was
being whisked off to see them. I tried very hard to
shut ears, eyes and nose, but even so I carried away a
few vivid, too vivid, impressions.

There was the vastness of them and the countless
miles of railway sidings. There was the perpetual
swirl of smoke, whether from the locomotives or from
the furnace that boiled down the by-products I did not
enquire. There was the picturesqueness of the men on
horses who marshalled the cattle into the pens far

Il8 A VISIT TO AMERICA

below I was watching from the top of a high office
building and looking straight down into the Yards.
There was the sudden opening of an elevator inside the
office building and the eruption from it of twelve gi
gantic young men in open-necked flannel shirts, riding
breeches, big, muddy boots, and Stetson-hats, and all
carrying riding-whips, and all looking rather less in
telligent, and much more bewildered at the novelty of
their surroundings, than a troupe of sea-lions in a cir
cus-tent. And lastly, firstly, all the time, all-pervading,
inescapable, there was the Smell.

I retreated from the Stock Yards as soon as I could,
and congratulated myself even more heartily than
before upon my tactics in Chicago, and made a
note in red ink in my diary: "Kansas City, third larg
est Stock Yards in the world. Mem. Avoid Kansas
City."

The residential districts of Omaha are unfortunately
reminiscent of Evanston in the individuality of the
architecture. There is this difference, however. In
Omaha about one house in three hundred is built on
the Colonial model and is beautiful.

There is one building of considerable interest in
Omaha. It is the Art Gallery, presented to the
City by a rich lady. It is a large, square, imposing
building, made of grey stone and built on a simple,
modern, dignified design. It was, in fact, one of the
most attractive modern buildings which I saw west
of the Atlantic Coast. But as an Art Gallery it had, at
any rate up to the time of my visit, a fatal defect. It

A VISIT TO AMERICA Up

contained no Art. The benefactress who built it pre
sumably expended all her energies and available cash
on the Gallery and left it to other ladies and gentle
men to cover the walls and fill the niches. So far no
one had come forward, and the only exhibits were the
works of contemporary local talent. Without doubt
benefactions will be forthcoming in time. A hot-dog
magnate or tooth-paste millionaire may even now be
lurking in Omaha who will shower Rembrandts, Van
Dycks, Cellinis, and Michael Angelos, upon his home
town. In the meanwhile, would it not be a graceful act
if the ancient City of Baltimore lent some of its huge
surplus from the Walters collection to its newer sister
in the Middle West ? There will never be room in Balti
more for the contents of those two hundred and forty-
three packing-cases that were found unopened in the
cellar. And even if Baltimore did not lend any of her
first-rank works of art, there are plenty of second-rank
pieces which she could easily spare for a few years, un
til the local millionaire weighs in. "What concern is it
of yours, you interfering Britisher?" cries the indignant
Baltimorean at this point. He thinks he has got me
cornered. But I have a very cunning defence. "None
whatever," I reply, and he goes away, with a baffled
look in his eye and writes an indignant letter to the
Sun newspaper, complaining about meddling travellers.
On the other hand, I shall probably be appointed Hon
orary Inspector of the Stockyards in Omaha, or Captain
in the Nebraskan Marine Artillery, and it will be the
old Swings and Roundabouts story again.

120 A VISIT TO AMERICA

Another striking feature of Omaha is, or rather was
it may all be changed by now the Drink Laws. When
I arrived, it was illegal to buy hard liquor in Nebraska,
and it was impossible to buy whisky or gin in more
than five out of every six cafes and restaurants; and
certainly not more than two in every six advertised
the excellence and purity of their spirits. In order to
evade this hideous restriction upon the liberties of the
individual, certain of the Citizenry of Omaha had
formed themselves into a club, with premises on the
first floor of the Hotel Fontenelle, for the purpose of
buying one another an occasional high-ball. The prin
ciple was sound, and the execution of it admirable, for
the club was comfortable and handsome. There were,
however, two drawbacks to it. Firstly, it was called, in
Old Englyshe letters, the Mayfair, which was, to say
the least of it, incongruous in the Middle West. I tried
hard to hope that the Fontenelle was named for
Bernard Le Bovier de F., the French writer who died
at the age of a hundred in 1757, and that Mayfair was
perhaps a Middle Western corruption of Marivaux or,
even, better still, Moliere. But I am afraid it was a
forlorn hope. The second drawback to the club was
that on the ground floor of the hotel there was a wide-
open bar at which the same drinks could be bought at
a smaller cost and without a yearly subscription. Fur
thermore, if the client of this bar so desired it, he could
be served by a fetching damsel, dressed in the costume
of an English hunting-squire. It was not until I had
been in Omaha for two days that I discovered this bar,

A VISIT TO AMERICA 121

and as it had only been open for a month, the Mayfair
clubmen had not yet heard of it.

In the club there was a superb negro singer, as splen
did as any, after Robeson, that I have heard. He was
singing in clubs and restaurants in order to save up
money to finish his Course of Music at Tuskegee and
start in as a composer. We talked long and late one
night. But when he said mournfully, "Our two races
just misunderstand each other," I had not the courage
to ask him what he thought of the White.

But I had not gone to Omaha to see Omaha, pleasant
city though it is. I had gone to catch a glimpse of the
famous Middle West, that valley of the Mississippi
River that is thirteen hundred miles long and six or
seven hundred miles wide. This Middle West has
long been the bogey of Europe. If the United States
Senate refused to ratify a treaty, we always ascribed it
to pressure from the Middle West; if a new and super-
efficient tractor began to undercut British tractors, it
was always due to the mass-production that was pos
sible only on the illimitable Middle West; if Europe
was flooded with abominably bad cinema pictures, it
was because they were specially designed for the hicks
of the Middle West; if the United States wanted its
war-debt repaid, it was owing to the ignorant clamour,
we explained to each other, of the citizens of the
Middle West who were so unreasonable as to want
their money back. In fact, we made the Middle West

122 A VISIT TO AMERICA

into a sort of Colossus, alternately illiterate and poli
tically acute, alternately half-witted and shrewd, alter
nately turning its back and its telescope upon European
affairs., alternately wrapped in a loutish sleep and pos
sessed of demoniac vigilance.

I motored out of Omaha with a friend to see some
thing of this enigmatic land. We drove out by a curly,
twisty road that was very unlike the great highroads
that I had seen so far in the country. But its twistiness
was historical, like that of so many English roads, for
it had once been the only trail westwards out of Omaha,
and in the days when that trail was first trodden by
white men, it was more important to twist and curl
under the skyline than to march arrogantly over hill
and dale in full view of lurking marauders. One of the
first villages we came to was called Elk City, and a
huge notice-board on the outskirts announced its name
and added, with a very proper civic pride, "Population
42." The sign-painter of Elk City must be a busy man,
for even in a community of that inconsiderable size,
there must be births and deaths and departure of old
citizens and arrival of new. In time the march of
Progress will dispossess that homely craftsman, and a
machine will click up the ever-increasing numbers as
Elk City soars to the hundred, and then to the glori
ous thousand, mark.

The road was lined with notices imploring the elec
torate to realize before it was too late that the safety
and welfare of the entire Union depended upon the
election of Mr. O. Boye to the post of Assistant Sur-

A VISIT TO AMERICA 123

veyor of Sidewalk Paving, or of Mr. Cyrus Hotcha to
the high office of Deputy Clerk to the Inspector of
Inland Waterways. For in the United States, it appears,
elections are real elections. There is none of your dull,
niggardly British system of electing one man or woman,
out of three or four candidates, to be a Member of
Parliament and then, having elected the Member, for
getting his, or her, face, opinions, election-pledges, poli
tical creed, forgetting even his, or her, name, nay
more, forgetting his, or her, very existence for the next
four or five years. There is more fun in an American
election, for on the very same day the elector has a
chance of choosing his Senator, his Judge, his Sheriff,
and, indeed, pretty nearly everything down to Postman,
Pullman-car Conductor, and Assistant-Pol ishers-of-the-
Cuspidors in the State Legislature. Thus the traveller
has the diversion of reading by the wayside that Mr.
Q. Z. Jugg will, if elected to the office of Sub-Inspector
of the Main Sewer, sub-inspect the Main Sewer more
conscientiously, and with a more incorruptible impar
tiality, than it has ever been sub-inspected before in all
the long proud story of Nebraskan Sewerage.

The sun shone gaily as we bowled along between
these rows of appeals and exhortations, and, as we drew
further and further away from Omaha, we were able
to catch a glimpse or two of the countryside, and at last
we got entirely clear of the elections and were able
to stop the car and have a look at the Nebraskan
plains that lay before us in the sunlight. The country
was not unlike the Somme country of France. There

124 A VISIT TO AMERICA

were the same gentle slopes and rolls of ground, the
same dotted farm-houses, and the same wooded valleys.
The difference was a difference of colour, for Picardy
is white with chalk and its green is a dusty, chalky
green, whereas Nebraska is black with the blackness
of its soil, and its green is dark and rich, except
where the winter wheat makes a lighter splash of
colour. A great drought had just come to an end,
and the landscape was checquered, light and dark,
with the deep colour of the alfalfa crop and the brassy
fields of corn that had been so scorched by the end
less sun of spring, summer and early fall that they
were not worth the trouble of harvesting. In the dis
tance the blue of the Elkhorn River made a cheerful
patch between its tree-covered banks with their oaks
and lindens and walnuts, and here and there a cluster
of cottonwoods added an almost Scandinavian touch
of flaxen gold against the Elkhorn s blue. Far away,
beyond the river, Nebraska stretched to the horizon
and for many a hundred miles beyond the horizon.

Our objective, a farm-house, was nearer at hand. It
was a neat white building, with green shutters, of
course, and a quantity of outhouses, and a clump of
trees round about. It was forty miles from a city of no
outstanding size, and entirely isolated from village,
hamlet, or even neighbouring farm, and yet it was
equipped with electric light, refrigerator, central heat
ing, and telephone. What percentage of the farms
within forty miles of London, the biggest city in the
world, have any of those amenities, let alone all four of

A VISIT TO AMERICA 125

them ? I only point that out in passing In order to annoy
my patriotic fellow-countrymen for, personally, I do not
care two straws what electrical equipment the farms of
England, or anywhere else, possess or lack. Agriculture
has never been a passion in my life,

I was, therefore, rather at a disadvantage in listening
to the agricultural talk of the farmer who greeted us
as we alighted from the car. At times, even with the
best will in the world to lower his talk to the standard
of two poor townees, Mr. Johansen became alarmingly
technical. But in spite of my ignorance, and Mr. Johan-
sen s professional erudition, I learned some interesting
things not about farming, but about the mysterious,
Sphinxlike Middle West.

We went all over the farm, all the eight hundred
acres of it, and a quaint trio we must have looked. My
friend, an Omahan banker, neat and dapper in his
banking-suit; I, as near to neatness and dapperness as I
can ever contrive to get; and Mr. Johansen, huge, fair-
haired, blue-eyed, young, slouching, in rough farm-
clothes, slow of speech and quick to laughter. We
set out, the townees picking their way delicately in
exquisite shoe, the countryman striding along uncon
scious of mud or slush. We saw the fat young calves
that had come in that week from the Great Sand-
hills up Wyoming way to be fattened for the Stock
Yards. The calves had come from a ranch 350 miles
away. With the strains of "Git along, little dogie," to
which I had been dancing a night or two before, in
my ears, I asked how many weeks it took to drive cattle

126 A VISIT TO AMERICA

350 miles, in these days when the roads are jammed
with traffic.

"I started on a Monday morning in my automobile/
said Mr. Johansen, "and I got to the ranch that day. On
Tuesday I selected my calves, and I got back on Wed
nesday just in time to get ready for them when they
arrived in trucks."

It was several minutes before I tried any more of the
taking-an-intelligent-interest stuff, and I gazed in pru
dently silent admiration at the chestnut-coloured son of
the greatest Belgian stallion that ever came to America,
and at the herds of cattle that were feeding at the corn-
troughs while all the flies in Nebraska buzzed about
trying to get the sugar out of the corn-canes. Then we
got into Mr. Johansen s automobile and drove across
the farm-lands to see fat sheep that were pasturing in a
wooded dell beside a stream; a group of grandchildren
of the Belgian stallion; an outhouse filled with up-to-
date machinery; a group of men digging a well; and
barns that were so bulging with corn that the board
ing of the walls was bending outwards and a brick
in the foundations had been dislodged by the pres
sure.

"Hey!" cried my Omahan companion, as he saw the
sagging walls, "What s all this? What s all this?"

"Corn," replied Mr. Johansen, with a sort of paternal
simplicity, as one speaks to an inquisitive baby.

"I know it s corn," answered the city-man with some
asperity. "But what is going to happen to that building
if a high wind gets up?"

A VISIT TO AMERICA 127

"Oh, it won t get up," said Mr. Johansen easily.

My friend was not so simply put off as all that. "But
what will happen if it does?* he persisted.

"It will be all right/ said Mr. Johansen with a big
guffaw. "Some other part of Nebraska will get my
corn, that s all. They ll gain what I lose."

From the expression of melancholy that settled upon
my companion s face at this answer, I could almost
deduce that his bank might have some financial interest
in Mr. Johansen s corn remaining upon Mr. Johansen s
land rather than upon some other portion of the
Nebraskan plain, but I discreetly did not enquire. Any
way the thought did not diminish Mr. Johansen s jovial
ity, and he pulled his car off the track and drove it slap
across a field so that I should see at close quarters the
little purple flower which we call, I believe, Lucerne in
Britain, but they call Alfalfa. Thence he steered briskly
up a dried river-bed, shouting gaily that if we stuck in
the sand we could always get a tractor to pull us out.
That crisis did not arise, however, and we emerged on
to a field that was completely bare. "This," said Mr,
Johansen with some solemnity, "is my most important
field. It is here that I am paid by the Government
to raise nothing at all. That is called National Recov-
ery."

This, of course, brought us to those two great con
versational topics, Depression and the New Deal. Mr.
Johansen had a lot to say about both of them and about
a third that was mainly confined to the Middle West,
the Long Drought.

128 A VISIT TO AMERICA

"They come here/ said Mr. Johansen, "and they
offer me money not to do this, and they offer me money
not to raise that, so I take their money. Naturally I take
it. Why not? Anybody would. But I could get
through the Depression without it. I m not going bank
rupt so long as I m farming a Nebraskan farm."

"Plenty of banks have gone bankrupt," said my com
panion gloomily. "Seven hundred out of thirteen hun
dred in Nebraska alone."

"And a good job too/ cried Mr. Johansen gaily,
striking the banker an ox-felling blow on the back.
"We are getting down to reasonable farm-finance at
last. Why, in the good old days before Depression, we
could mortgage our farms as wildly as we pleased, be
cause we knew perfectly well that our next year s profits
would be so enormous that we could probably pay the
whole mortgage off in a year. We re more careful now,
and when we do borrow, we borrow from the Federal
Land Bank. Government long-term credits, my boy.
That s the racket now." I thought, though I may have
been mistaken, that my companion winced a little at
the application of the word "racket" to anything so
sacrosanct as the principles of banking.

"And I ll tell you another thing," went on Mr. Johan
sen. "Depression has made us more careful. We don t
any longer leave our agricultural machinery lying out
all winter. We put it away and oil it and use it again
next year.

"And I ll tell you another thing," said Mr. Johansen.
"Depression has finished all the get-rich-quick notions

A VISIT TO AMERICA I2p

that we used to have. When I was a kid, we used to
arrange our futures very simply. Get over college and
then make a million dollars. That was all."

"What college were you at?" I enquired timidly.
That, at least, was a safe unagricultural question.

"Yale," said the farmer. "But that million-dollar stuff
is finished. It s all small profits now, but steady ones.
We ve got to get accustomed to the English way, of
choosing a trade and sticking to it for life. In the old
days we went into farming as a nice outdoor occupation
for a few years while we made a fortune on the stock-
market. Now we re in it and we ve got to stay in it, so
we re learning our job at last."

"What about the Drought?" I asked.

"Well, the Drought was bad," said Mr. Johansen. "It
was very bad. It burnt up the corn terribly. And it did
more than burn the corn. We ve had droughts before,
but never such a long one. Other droughts have been
bad on one or two crops, but this one was so long that
it was bad for all the crops. But it had a good side too.
We had to sit down and think out ways of dodging it,
new farming methods, new crops, new ideas. I ve
learnt more about farming during the last year than in
all my life before,"

"What will happen if you get another drought next
year?" asked my companion.

"It will be bad, very bad," said Mr. Johansen. "But
even another drought won t break us. Even N.R.A.
can t break us. Look at that." And he swung his long
arm in the direction of a hillside. "The longest drought

130 A VISIT TO AMERICA

on record, and look at that. After a few days rain, the
winter wheat is up, and Strong as you like."

He swung his arm on a wider circle, embracing this
time not his own 800 acres but the whole Nebraskan
plain, or, wider still, the whole of the Middle West.
"The valley of the Missouri River," he exclaimed, "is
the richest in the world. Seventy-five years ago it was
nothing but grass and saplings and bands of Indians.
Look at the corn-lands now, and the cattle, and the
farm-buildings. Not a thing more than seventy-five
years old. Do you think you can get that down with a
silly little drought or two ? Never. Your city-folk may
talk of bankruptcies and ruin. Come and live on Ne
braskan soil and learn what Nature can do in the way
of recovery after a hard time. Nothing will worry you
then.

"If you keep close to Nature," said Mr. Johansen, "you
can t go wrong. Not in Nebraska anyway. Of course
if you like to plough up your cattle-ranges and try
to grow wheat as they did in South Dakota when
wheat went to $2.20 a bushel during the War, then you
deserve anything you get."

I asked what they did get.

"They got blown away," replied the farmer with a
huge grin. "Yes, sir. There wasn t grass any more to
hold their thin top-soil together and it got blown away.
The last that was seen of it was a great dust-cloud over
Baltimore and then it went out into the Atlantic." He
laughed cheerfully at the notion, and from what I saw
of the spirits of the Baltimoreans I imagine that they

A VISIT TO AMERICA 131

too must have laughed cheerfully at the flying farms
of South Dakota.

A herd of Hereford cattle came past, fat and sleek
and healthy.

"There s a link with old England/ 5 said the farmer.
"Herefords. Best cattle in the world for us. Your
Scotch Angus are good, but they re terribly wild. Talk
ing of Scotch ..."

The sun was setting over the Elkhorn River as we
drove home along the old trail, and the population of
Elk City was still 42. Purple clouds were trailing over
the Nebraskan plains, and lights were beginning to
shine in the windows of the lonely farms.

I learnt a lot of things that afternoon, besides such
important agricultural facts as that you can bury your
silage in Nebraska, whereas in Iowa and Kansas you
have to put it into towers. (Whether or not I shall ever
find myself in Nebraska with a lot of silage on my
hands, is a matter of some dubiety. The odds, I should
say, were against it. But if the long shot came off, I
should know exactly what to do with it. I should bury
it without the slightest hestitation, although I must
admit that what you do with it afterwards remains a
dark mystery.)

As I say, I learnt a lot more than that, and found
the answers to one or two of our European puzzles.

For one thing I found that the Middle West is a long
way from Europe. Even I, a European, felt incredibly

132 A VISIT TO AMERICA

remote as I stood on the banks of the Elkhorn River
that afternoon. I was ten thousand miles further away
than when I was in New York or Chicago, further
away even than when I reached, later on, San Fran
cisco. The whole outer world fades away. Nothing
seems to be of any importance except the spring sow
ing or the fattening of cattle. What does it matter to
you, as you stroll in the shadow of the cottonwoods,
what the people of Memel think of the people in
Lithuania? Would you leave your sheep beside the
Elkhorn to go and fight for Latvia against Poland?
Would you lie awake at night in your Nebraskan
farm, worrying about the justice of awarding Eupen
and Malmedy to Belgium?

What have wars, thousands of miles away, to do
with this peaceful, eternal, business of living on the
soil, by the soil, for the soil ? I used to think, as many
others think, that the Middle West is supremely igno
rant. I was wrong. The Middle West is supremely wise.
It goes on its way, hating no man and fearing no man
and saying, as Shakespeare s Corin said, "The greatest
of my pride is to see my ewes graze and my lambs
suck."

It knows very little about Europe, even though so
many thousands of the farmers are first generation im
migrants from Scandinavia, and many thousands more
are children of first generation immigrants. "My father
was born in Copenhagen/ said Mr. Johansen, "but I am
an American."

The Mississippi Valley takes them and makes them

A VISIT TO AMERICA 133

into Americans, because the Mississippi Valley is
America. The cities of the East and of the long Pacific
slope are important, but they are not the heart of the
country. They talk more, but they mean less. They
travel the world and broaden their minds, but when
the ill-winds begin to blow it is not the East and West
that stand unshakable. It is that Valley in the Middle
that cannot be conquered.

CHAPTER EIGHT

"From far Dakota s canons,

Lands of the wild ravine, the dusky Sioux, the lonesome stretch, the silence,

Haply to-day a mournful wail, haply a trumpet-note for heroes."

WALT WHITMAN.

MY ATTEMPT to cut away from the standard routes of
the European visitor was very nearly frustrated. From
Omaha I had planned to leave the ordinary Chicago to
San Francisco line at Lincoln, Nebraska, and strike
north-westerly on the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy
railroad into the State of Montana. Whether it was
sheer carelessness, or whether it was subconscious pres
sure from the spirits of the myriad Britons who have
passed that way, is a problem that may never be solved,
but at any rate 3 at Lincoln (the Capitol of which, in
cidentally, is a very splendid bit of modern American
architecture) I installed myself in the dining-car of the
San Francisco train instead of the Montana train and
ordered a drink. As the Montana train was not due
to leave for fifty minutes, I was puzzled when we
started off in five, and as we rapidly gathered way and
plunged forward into the night, I began to get exceed
ingly alarmed. Everything I possessed, except the
clothes I was wearing was in the Montana train. Hasty
enquiries soon showed that my greatest alarms were en-

A VISIT TO AMERICA 135

tirely justified, and I was off to San Francisco. But I
need not have worried overmuch. Waiters, attendants,
conductors, ticket inspectors, and other functionaries
began leaping hither and thither, passing words to and
fro, and within half a minute the express had halted
and the door was unlocked for my escape. I threw a
dollar-note to the waiter for my drink and hopped out
into the darkness. The ticket collector leant out and
waved and said, "We can t let you English visitors get
a wrong idea of our railroads, sir."

I ran stumblingly back to the station and as I ran I
wondered what would happen to an American who
got, by mistake, into the Flying Scotsman at King s
Cross Station. At least I didn t really wonder, for I
knew perfectly well that unless he cared to stop the
train himself by pulling the cord and paying his five
pounds, he would not be decanted until he reached
the first halt, which is the Waverley Station of Edin
burgh, about four hundred miles away.

The next day was my first whole day in an American
train. We ambled on and on across the dreary waste of
the northwestern edge of Nebraska, and southerly edge
of South Dakota. The country was very like our own
Highland moors without the heather. Rolling hills
stretched away on each side of the track. In Scotland
they would have been purple with an occasional splash
of green. In South Dakota they were yellow with short
grass and yellow with sand. Even on the very rare

136 A VISIT TO AMERICA

patches of riper vegetation the weeds were a dusty
green, like the leaves of an olive-tree, and they were
spotted with tufts of sagebrush, cocked up in the air
like the tails of innumerable rabbits that had been
struck into immobility by an attack of jaundice. The
far horizon was decorated with lines of unhappy,
struggling fir-trees, which only seemed to be green
because of the desolation of yellow sand and sage. For
miles and miles and miles there was no human habita
tion in sight, and no sheep or cow or living thing
except, sometimes, a flapping crow.

The place-names reflected the increasing, deepening
despair of the old pioneers as they struggled painfully
into the wilderness. They obviously started out full
of hope and optimism, and the first names west of
Lincoln are gay, jolly ones Emerald, Pleasant Dale,
Ruby, Aurora, Grand Island, Ravenna, Sweetwater,
these are the christenings of carefree men. The first
note of depression is struck at Broken Bow. Clearly
some accident occurred here, and there are no more
cheerful titles, but only dull surnames such as Gavin,
Linscott, and Dunning. The first fine rapture has
gone, and I felt no surprise when we came to Dis
mal River. The spirits of the Old-Timers must have
been at their lowest. And rightly is it called Dismal
River.

West of that again, the country gets even drearier
and drearier. The streams have disappeared and the
sand is yellower than ever and the sagebrush drier. By
this time a fierce and bitter irony was eating into

A VISIT TO AMERICA 137

the souls of the pioneers. Things were so bad that
they could conjure up a mocking laugh at their hard
ships and disillusionments. At least so I read the ex
planation of Lakeside where there is no lake, and
Alliance where nothing meets,, and, grimmest joke of
all, Nonpareil.

It was a relief to come at last into Wyoming to a
wretched little jumble of hovels and shacks, and to get
still another proof of the indomitability of the human
spirit in its endless war with the cruelty of Nature.
For this poor little heap of cabins was labelled, on a
huge board, "UPTON, BEST TOWN ON EARTH."

The material assets of the best town on earth were
about seventeen rickety huts and about seventeen thou
sand rusty tins, but its soul was full of unquenchable
fire. It was a Don Quixote of a place.

Hour after hour after hour we rolled across the
wastes. I read every magazine in the Club-car three
times from cover to cover, advertisements and all, not
merely the famous story-magazines, Cosmopolitan, Sat
urday Evening Post, Collier s and so on, but the Sta
tistical Journal of the Des Moines Chamber of Com
merce, the Journal of the Riverters and Welders Asso
ciation of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and the magazine
which is devoted to the welfare of the manufacturers
of boiler-tubes. There was no alternative, however;
the traveller on that train has either to study with
the utmost concentration at his command the percent
age of aluminum rivets as compared with the percent
age of non-ferrous something-or-other in something

138 A VISIT TO AMERICA

else, or else to gaze out of the window all day and go
mad.

Most of my companions in the Club-car were busi
ness-men, and they studied rivets, or whatever it was,
unceasingly. They all smoked cigars and did quite a
bit of expectoration from time to time. Indeed it was
in this train that one of the major insoluble problems
of American life obtruded itself upon my attention.
Why is it that so many American gentlemen, often of
the most distinguished appearance and of otherwise
faultless manners, find it necessary to expectorate in
public so often, whereas American ladies so very sel
dom do? In fact, I cannot recall a single instance of
seeing an American lady perform this inelegant feat,
whereas American gentlemen are at it, in Club-cars at
any rate, frequently. I never solved this problem.

I noticed another curious thing in the Club-car. At
about midday, a tall, beautifully dressed, handsome,
completely bicn soignee woman came in and sat down
in an armchair. She was the first woman of the day
to come in, and there were at the time about a dozen
men sitting in the car, smoking cigars and poring over
their documents. Not one of them paid the slightest
attention to her. There were no semi-furtive glances
of admiration and she certainly deserved admiration
no cautious straightening of ties or self-conscious
pulling-down of waistcoats. It was just as if she did
not exist. She had bright, amused eyes. But these men
did not try to catch them. She had a crooked mouth
that was full of a gracious frivolity. These men pre-

A VISIT TO AMERICA 139

ferred the cuspidor to frivolity. She had a drooping
eyelid over one eye that was completely roguish. These
men pored over their Import Statistics. At last a diver
sion occurred. She asked the attendant for an apple.
There were no apples on the train, but the man sitting
beside her looked up for a moment from his task o*
cornering something or other and produced an apple
out of a small bag. The lady thanked him with a daz
zling smile, and a conversation began. After two min
utes the man returned to his merger or whatever it
was and did not speak another word.

We were in Wyoming by this time and the country
grew steadily wilder. The monotony of Nebraskan
and Dakotan yellow was being replaced by hot, red
soil, and the landscape was covered with thousands of
small, red., pyramidal hills like barrows that mark the
burial grounds of primaeval warriors, each one divided
from its neighbour by steep, stony ravines, dried-up
creeks, or shallow rivers. Here and there a miserable,
stunted tree stood forlornly by itself.

The small villages, anything from five to twenty
miles apart, look almost exactly like the villages of
east Poland or the Russian steppes. The houses were
always made of wood, except that ocasionally there was
a square stone building that was obviously a barn or
granary, and the faded remnants of blue or green paint
upon a shutter or door-lintel were sad reminders of a
day when the builder had been proud of his handiwork
or the owner proud of his possession. Not once did I
see a bright new patch of paint, to show where the

I 4 A VISIT TO AMERICA

spirit of Upton was still fighting against the desert. As
in Poland and Russia, the arrival of the train is a great
occasion, and the villagers come trooping down to the
station to stare at the passengers and exchange a greet
ing with the engine-drivers. The only real difference
between the Wyoming railroad village and ^the
Ukrainian, is that in the former the local church, if it
exists, is indistinguishable from the other shacks. In
Eastern Europe, the horizon is dotted with sugar-white
churches, and green and blue domes.

We passed La Belle Fourche River that light-
hearted, optimistic Frenchman who could see anything
belle hereabouts, was a long way from France and
slowly, very slowly, the land became less barren.
Stretches of green grass became more frequent; a few
cattle appeared; and sometimes there was even a little
sparse cultivation. The pioneers must have felt that
things were on the upgrade at last, for we came to
Felix, and Clear Creek, and Clearmont. There was a
feeling of hope in the atmosphere. The colours of the
hills were brighter, and the air was clearer, and even
the faces of the business-men in the Club-car assumed
an expression of near-intelligence.

And then in front of us, west and north and north
west, spanning the horizon in a mighty curve, burst into
view the snowy mountains of Montana, and we were
out of the dismal plains at last. Almost at once
we were bowling along a pleasant valley, full of cattle
and sheep, and dotted with haystacks, and with a
stream rolling along between banks that were fringed

A VISIT TO AMERICA 141

with real, tail, leafy, flourishing trees, and soon we left
Wyoming and entered Montana.

Everything changed quickly, the desolation, the
despair, the grimness. The very first halt in Montana
was at the hamlet of Wyola to my disappointment
we did not stop at Aberdeen. A special halt there
would have been indeed a graceful compliment to a
citizen of Aberdeen, Scotland and on a notice-board,
Wyola announced, with infinite jauntiness and a great
deal of foresight, that it would be the scene of a Mam
moth Rodeo Jamboree on July 4, 1938.

The magnificent blue semicircle of the Big Horn
Mountains came nearer and nearer, and as the sun
sank behind the snows, we passed the fatal battlefield
of the Little Big Horn, where the unfortunate General
Custer rode out on June 25, 1876, to fight the Sioux
and the Cheyenne and was overwhelmed with all his
men by the famous Indians, Sitting Bull and Crazy
Horse, Dull Knife and Two Moons and Little Wolf
and American Horse and White Bull, and the rest of
the plumed and feathered warriors.

I had to change at Billings and wait four hours until
nearly midnight for the Northern Pacific express that
was to take me on to Helena. I said good-bye without
any regret to the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy
Railroad. It was not that I objected to the train it
had carried me with safety, comfort, and punctuality
but rather to the country through which it ran. So

142 A VISIT TO AMERICA

far as I am concerned, anyone who wants the country
between Broken Bow, Nebraska, and Sheridan, Wyo
ming, can have it. There will be no opposition from
me. The old cowpuncher "with his hat throwed back
and his spurs a-jingling," spoke a true word when he
sang to the little dogies, "It s your misfortune, and
none of my own (Whoopee ti yi yo, git along, little
dogies), For you know Wyoming will be your new
home."

The streets of Billings are well-lit, small hotels and
cafes are numerous, and garages abound, I went into
the brightest-lit hotel, sat down to dinner, and ordered
a Scotch high-ball. I was politely told not only that
Montana was a dry state so far as restaurants were con
cerned, but that the law was observed. This was a seri
ous blow to an old illusion. I had always imagined that
the traditions of the lawless Northwest were still alive,
that the Sheriff s writ only ran as far as his gun could
carry, and that the spirit of the old miner and cow-
puncher was untameable even by the most drastic
amendments to the Constitution of the United States.
Why, in peaceful, semi-Scandinavian, law-abiding
Nebraska, no one paid any attention to the drink-laws.
Surely in wild, son-of-a-gun Montana, they would
hardly have heard of Prohibition, let alone continued
to be Dry after Repeal. But it was only too true. There
is no need for Vigilantes of the Pussyfoot movement
to organize themselves for the suppression of the law
less drinkers. The lawless drinkers are too law-abiding
for that, and the great James Williams of whom the

A VISIT TO AMERICA 143

monument records that he was the "Captain of the
Vigilantes through whose untiring efforts and intrepid
daring Law and Order were established in Montana,"
seems to have done his work too thoroughly.

But I could not help wondering what James Wil
liams would have thought of it all. He was quick with
his gun, and resolute in the stamping out of crime, but
I could find no record that he was a teetotaller or was
interested in preventing his friends from drinking a
high-ball when they felt so inclined.

There was only one place in all Billings where I
could legally buy a bottle of Scotch whisky., and that
was in the State liquor-store. Temporarily abandon
ing my dinner, therefore, I ran through the night to
the State liquor-store, put down my five dollars and
asked for a bottle of Johnny Walker.

"Have you got your State license to buy liquor?"
asked the store-keeper.

I recoiled in horror. The spirit of the lawless cow-
puncher had sunk even lower than I had feared.

"No," I said. "Is it necessary?"

"It is, son," replied the man.

"Where can I get a permit?"

"At the Municipal Building [for it may have been
County, or City, or Police, Building I cannot remem
ber] to-morrow between the hours of ten and four/

"But I want a drink now/ I protested.

"Isn t that just too bad?" was the unsympathetic
answer.

"Well," I said, stung into an unwonted vehemence

144 A VISIT TO AMERICA

by his lack of sympathy, "I ve come six thousand miles
from Scotland to see your blank, blank, super-blank
State of Montana, and it s a bit hard that I can t buy a
bottle of my own native drink without one of your
blank, blank, super-blank permits."

The entire staff of the liquor-store was galvanized
into activity in a flash.

"Are you from Scotland?" exclaimed the store
keeper. "Why the hell didn t you say so before? Of
course you can have whisky and as much as you like.
To hell with the State permit!"

After a lot of hand-shaking and expressions of
mutual esteem, I departed, bottle snug in pocket, back
to my dinner.

But progress back was not so easy. The sidewalks
were suddenly crowded with people, and an occasional
cop was asking folks not to use the streets. The reason
was soon obvious. It was now late October and the
electoral fever which I had noticed in the exhortations
and appeals on the road out of Omaha, was steadily
mounting, and a torch-light procession was coming
past. The politicians of Billings, whatever their short
comings, defects, and general inability to conjure
Utopia out of a hat may be, have grasped one uni
versal, fundamental principle of human nature that
has apparently been concealed to their Omahan con
freres. They have hit upon the eternal Truth that it is
more difficult to attract a crowd by exhibiting photo
graphs of stoutish, pasty-faced, horn-rimmed candi
dates for the popular fancy, than by parading a bevy of

A VISIT TO AMERICA 145

pretty girls in velveteen trousers. The torch-light pro
cession was almost entirely made up of pretty girls in
velveteen trousers, and the crowds of admirers and
sympathizers on the sidewalks was, in consequence,
very large. Indeed, the onlookers found it almost im
possible to tear themselves away until the last of the
ravishing torch-bearers had disappeared.

When the last of the torch-bearers had disappeared,
I returned to my belated dinner which tasted all the
better for the draughts of my national drink with
which it was accompanied. I paid for my dinner with
a ten-dollar note and was staggered to get my change
in great, shining, silver, cart-wheel dollars. They were
the first that I had seen.

As I strolled back to the station which, by the way,
had now become a Deepo I could not ascertain the
exact whereabouts of the Mason and Dixon Line
which separates the Stations from the Deepos I passed
a shop-window which seemed to me to be one of the
saddest things I had ever seen. It was empty of goods,
it was grimy with long disuse, its glass was cracked.
There was no name across the top, and a few adver
tisements hung, tattered and soiled, from the door-post,
and the paint was cracked on the door. Across the
window-pane ran, in big, defiant letters, the slogan,
"We buy and sell most anything/

The Northern Pacific express thundered in to the
Deepo and I commended my soul once again to
Botolph, patron saint of wayfarers, and my person once
again to an African,

CHAPTER NINE

"We primeval forests felling,

We the rivers stemming, vexing we and piercing deep the mines within,
We the surface broad surveying, we the virgin soil upheaving,
Pioneers! O Pioneers!"

WALT WHITMAN.

HELENA, MONTANA, is rightly named after a figure of
Romance, for Helena itself is a Romantic town. It lies
on the slopes of the Montana Rockies, about forty-five
hundred feet above sea-level, and on the west are the
higher mountains,, on the east a broad valley. Noth
ing more romantic about that, you say, than about any
page in any Baedeker. Just wait a minute. It was in
1864 that gold was discovered where Helena is now,
twelve years before Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull
destroyed Custer three hundred miles and more to the
east, between the gold-discoverers and the Mississippi
River. The discoverers must have come up from the
Southwest, for they brought with them the phrase
"placer-mining," which is simply a corruption of the
Spanish word plaza, or place where minerals are found.
So it must have been from the Spanish Southwest, from
California and Nevada and Arizona, that the first pros
pectors came across the Rockies into Montana. They
were bold men and they cared as little for Crazy Horse as
for grizzly bears. They struck gold in a narrow winding

146

A VISIT TO AMERICA 147

creek which they called Last Chance Gulch, and the
Gulch is the Main Street of Helena today. My encyclo
paedia a smart, up-to-date, expensive one tells me that
in Helena, "many of the streets are wide and straight,
shaded with rows of cottonwood trees, and faced with
handsome residences and business premises." So they
are. My encyclopedia has not lied to me. But I care
not a straw for Helena s wide and straight streets.
All the essence of the Romance of the Northwest is in
that narrow curly street which runs steadily uphill
where the gold used to lie. Thirty million dollars of
gold were taken out of Last Chance Gulch by placer-
mining, and when, not so long ago, a new hotel was
built on Main Street, eight hundred dollars of gold
dust came out of the foundation-hole. Thank Heaven
that the citizens of Helena have a sense of the fitness of
things, and when the proprietors of the hotel came to
give it a name, they did not call it, as we would have
called it in Europe, the Ritz or the Carlton or even the
Ritz-Carlton or the Majestic or the Splendid or any
other meaningless international jargon of sounds. They
called it simply the Placer Hotel in memory of the
placer-miners who made Last Chance Gulch into the
flourishing city of Helena, capital of a State that is
five times the size of Scotland.

Walk up that narrow little street, between its simple
rows of unpretentious shops, and you come suddenly
out of Main Street into the old Gulch. Civilization
drops away behind you,, and you are back in the strong
old days of the sixties when all the world, so far as the

148 A VISIT TO AMERICA

placer-miners knew, was young. Stone and mortar
and neat commercial architecture come to an end, and
in the tiny valley, overhung with pine-clad hillsides,
you stumble on log-cabins of the early days. They are
squat and square, and the logs are unshaped, and the
crevices between the roundnesses of the logs are filled
with white plaster. The old Posting House still stands
beside the road, and near it there is another building,
believed to have been at one time also a Posting House,
which is unique in my experience of architecture. It
is more than likely that it is unique in the world, and
certainly Montana ought to cherish it as an "ancient
monument" of very great importance. The ground-
floor is an ordinary Old-Timer s cabin,, strong and
primitive. But the amazing thing about it is that there
is a second story, built in the true tradition of Eliza
bethan England. Lovely reddish pink bricks and cross
beams (made of cedar instead of oak) in the old pat
tern of uprights, laterals, and curving supports, the
second story might have come straight from a Buck
inghamshire village of the Tudor times. What in the
name of Heaven it is doing in the bottom of Last
Chance Gulch, six thousand miles from Tudor Buck
inghamshire, and who in the name of Heaven built it,
and whatever made the builder think of putting it on
top of an Old-Timer s log-cabin, are dark mysteries.

Turn up the hill, for a moment, to the right of the
Gulch and you are plunged still deeper into the Ro
mance of the pioneering days. Reeder Street is perhaps
a hundred yards long, uphill into the side of the

A VISIT TO AMERICA 149

Gulch, and there are perhaps twenty or thirty little
houses on it, and in it you will see ancient men sitting
in the sun at their doors plying ancient trades, working
away with bits of metal or bits of wood, sharpening
hand-tools, cutting, filing, hammering, and so intent,
each upon his small task, that they do not peer up at
the passing stranger.

The earliest house of all is the Gilpatrick house,
within a yard of Reeder Street. And if there is
Romance in the Gulch and the old cabins and the
ancient craftsmen, there is double Romance in the Gil
patrick house. For not only is it the earliest of them,
but in front of it grow two tall locust-trees which were
brought as seedlings in tomato-cans by the Gilpatricks
on their long journey from the East in their covered
wagon.

As it climbs higher into the hills, Last Chance Gulch
turns into Grizzly Gulch. The whole scene is very like
Scotland, a stream rippling down among willow-sap
lings, pine-trees and mountains. Only the stones are
yellower than in Scotland.

The road twists and turns up Grizzly Gulch, and
the heaps of soil and grass-covered stones beside the
bed of the stream mark the labours of the pioneer
placer-miners, and of their successors, the thrifty
Chinamen who worked over the soil for gold-dust
which had escaped the careless, free-and-easy methods
of the pioneers. I walked up the road, musing upon
such hackneyed themes as "Departed Glory," "Desola
tion where used to be Human Activity," and "Dead

150 A VISIT TO AMERICA

Industries," and misquoting to myself such extracts
from Omar Khayyam as I could recall that might be
appropriate. Ichabod, I fancy, was frequently on my
lips as I strolled along. Needless to say, I was com
pletely wrong and all my philosophical reflections were
wasted.

For I came upon two men who were very busy in the
bed of the sapling-filled creek below the road and I fell
into conversation with them. They were big strong
men, brothers, with slow smiles and slow speech. I
asked them casually what they were doing and, to my
discomfiture and ill-concealed chagrin, they replied
politely that they were placer-mining.

"Placer-mining!" I cried. "But I thought placer-
mining was dead and buried these thirty years."

"Maybe so," they answered, "but it s come to life
again." And they told me the whole story, how placer-
mining is unprofitable with gold at twenty dollars an
ounce, but at thirty-five an ounce it becomes profitable
again, how even the Chinamen had left some behind,
how it was better to work for three dollars a week than
to hang about the streets of Helena and draw Relief,
and how the mountains were full of men doing the
same.

All my moralizing fell to the ground at one blow.
So far from being a dead industry in a dead country,
gold-mining was a thriving and growing industry, and
the Pioneers were abroad in the hills once again. The
men of 64 in Montana did not look to the State or the
Federal Government to support them, and the men of
to-day seemed to feel the same way about things.

A VISIT TO AMERICA 151

I sat down on a tree-trunk and was given a demon
stration in the art of panning gold, and then, having
mastered the principles, I took a pan myself and set to
work while the two brothers, having overcome their
disappointment at finding that I was not Mr. Ramsay
MacDonald, returned to their labours. (Incidentally,
their labours consisted of digging a tunnel slap under
the main motor-road. I asked them if nobody objected
to having tunnels dug slap under the main motor-roads
of Montana, and they scratched their heads and said
that they had not thought about it, but it was a free
country anyway.)

After half an hour s hard work with my pan, I began
to think that perhaps there was more in panning than
1 had thought; but after three-quarters of an hour I
was able to display, with a good deal of pride, a pro
digious quantity of gold-dust among the gravel. The
brothers emerged from their tunnel and shook their
heads sadly.

"Fool s gold, fool s gold," they murmured.

"What the devil do you mean by fool s gold?" I
shouted indignantly. My arms were aching intolerably
and my back was cracking.

"Mica," they said, and retired into the tunnel.

After an hour and twenty minutes I had finished the
pan, and the result was four grains of real gold dust,
gleaming bravely if somewhat forlornly in their con
spicuous isolation upon the black sand.

"You ll never make money that w r ay," I said.

The brothers gazed solemnly at my pan. "We would
have done it quicker," said one of them, "and only got

152 A VISIT TO AMERICA

three grains. But a Scotchman couldn t bear losing a
grain. That s why you were so slow." And they
guffawed with delight,

I strolled back through the woods. The ground was
red with the berries of the kinnikinnick, and from
somewhere high above me on the hillside came the
click of metal upon stone where some other Pioneer
was at work.

That evening I came upon one of the most remark
able newspaper paragraphs which it has ever been my
good-fortune to see. It occurred in the Helena Daily
Independent, and ran as follows:

VITAL STATISTICS
DEATHS

Mrs. Amelia Milch, 67, of 534 South Rodney Street.
Martin A. Terwilliger, 38, of Stratton, Neb.

Sousa s band was heard only once by his mother; it made
her so nervous that she never went to hear it again.

And, as if this was not enough joy for one evening,
after dinner that night I was taken by friends, to
whom I am in consequence indebted for ever, to a
Wrestling Tournament.

There were about five hundred of us packed into
the Masonic Hall that is called the Shrine on Masonic
occasions, and the Shrine Arena when a bout of wres-

A VISIT TO AMERICA 153

tling is toward, and we wore anything from gents
lounge suitings to blue shirts,, shaggy trousers and ten-
gallon hats. The walls were covered with national
flags, and the selection was a very queer one. There
were two gigantic Stars and Stripes, one upside-down,
two Turkish flags and one each of Sweden, Norway,
and Spain. Then came, most mysteriously and at the
same time to me most gratifyingly, the Royal Stand
ard of Scotland, and next to it Siam and then the
British Red Ensign.

But there was no time to ask questions about the
flags, for Referee Foster, in grey trousers and white
sweater, was clambering nimbly into the ring, and the
miners and cowboys were giving a great "hand" to
the Ref.

Mr. Foster was a remarkable figure. He always
refereed these contests, apparently, because he was so
indisputably the best wrestler, boxer, and all-in fighter,
in Montana, that nobody could be persuaded to go into
the ring against him, and that is saying a lot in a
crowd of pretty tough Northwestern miners and
ranchers. There was nothing left for him, therefore,
but to referee.

When the applause had subsided, the Ref. announced
the first match. "Bob Macaulay [wild cheering] at 163
pounds against Sammy Morgan [tornado of booing
and hissing] at 161- pounds, eight rounds of ten min
utes each, two out of three falls to win/*

Mr. Macaulay, an honest-looking, rather muddle-
headed fellow, slouched forward and bowed to his

154 A VISIT TO AMERICA

enthusiastic supporters, and then Mr. Morgan walked
forward and sneered at the audience. The more they
yelled at him, the more open became his derision, and
when a particularly violent tornado of cat-calls shivered
the rafters of the Shrine, he made an expressive gesture
of contempt with his thumb, forefingers and nose, and
a row of cowboys in blue shirts just behind us began to
shuffle their feet and one or two half-rose from their
seats as if meditating a rush at the ring.

When the match started, it was soon obvious why Mr.
Morgan was not the darling of the crowd. The mo
ment Bob began to get a firm grip on some part of his
anatomy, Sammy made a galvanic wriggle, dived
through the ropes, scuttled round outside the ring and
jumped in at the other side, and fell upon the slow-
witted Bob in the rear while that worthy was still
wondering where his opponent had got to.

Sammy spent at least half the time racing round out
side the ring, and the audience got madder than ever,
and poor Bob got almost giddy trying to spin round
fast enough in the middle of the ring to keep his
adversary in view. Once or twice Sammy came a litde
too close and Bob enveloped him in a bear-like hug,
but each time Sammy just managed to reach the ropes
in time, and as soon as he got half over the edge of the
platform, the Force of Gravity did the rest and both
wrestlers went out together. Simple Bob, a man of one
idea, was strongly in favour on these occasions of con
tinuing the match among the ringside-seats, but he
soon found that Ref. Foster had other ideas, and he

A VISIT TO AMERICA 155

sadly let go of Sammy s neck, ear, left ankle, right
shoulder-blade, and waist, and climbed sulkily back
into the ring, while Sammy nipped round to the other
side, blew a kiss to the raging crowd, and prepared
to resume hostilities. But by this time poor Bob was
so obsessed with the injustice of the world, and so
bewildered by the eel-like tactics of his adversary, that
he advanced with a sort of half-hearted carelessness,
and, to the horror of the cowboys and miners,
was overwhelmed in a trice by the nimble Sam and
flung heavily to the ground. First fall to Mr. Mor
gan.

Pandemonium raged in the Shrine. Even the flag of
Siam seemed to ripple sympathetically, and it appeared
to me that once or twice Mr. Morgan glanced anxiously
towards the door marked "Exit," and that he was not
quite so free with his smile of derision as before.

The second round opened ominously. Sammy,
penned in a corner, made his usual dive out of the ring
and a piece of sausage whizzed past his ear as he got
up, followed by a meat-pie of some kind and the rung
of a chair. A moment later Ref. Foster announced that
Sam Morgan abandoned the match, having injured his
collar-bone in falling out of the ring, and that the next
contest would be between Lumberman Pound and
Louie Floyd.

It soon transpired that handsome, curly-headed
young Louie was the idol of the crowd, and that the
Lumberman was universally held to be the dirtiest
fighter in Montana. As the match went on, I did not

156 A VISIT TO AMERICA

know whether to be sorrier for the unfortunate Louie
or for the brutal Lumberman. Every time the Lumber
man got a foot or hand free he either kicked Louie or
illegally punched him, and each time Ref. Foster
kicked or punched the Lumberman. On one rare occa
sion Louie got a rather awkward half-Nelson, or some
thing, on the Lumberman and the latter only extri
cated himself by getting hold of the pretty curls and
giving them a violent tug. Whereupon the Ref. seized
the Lumberman s black mop with both hands and
dragged him round the ring. This was more than the
fine old blood of the Pounds could stand, and he leapt
to his feet and made a rush at Mr. Foster. But the
Ref. knew the game by heart and he dropped on one
knee in a most sinister way and awaited the assault. It
was just like a terrier and an experienced cat. The
Lumberman s heart failed him, he hesitated, stopped,
and was trying to make up his mind what to do, when
he was seized from behind by the resourceful Mr.
Floyd and dashed to the boards.

One down and two to play, Mr. Pound s tactics
became even dirtier than before, and the Ref. was kept
busy punching, wrestling, and hair-tugging. At last
the climax came. Poor Louie, who was playing a very
third fiddle, fell on his head and was instantly kicked
on the ear by the Lumberman, who was promptly
uppercut by Mr. Foster. The Lumberman, in despera
tion, let loose a wild swing at the Ref. and missed that
agile gentleman by yards, and then, realizing the fatal
rashness of the act, he sprang over the ropes and bolted

A VISIT TO AMERICA 157

for the door, Ref. Foster also sprang over the ropes
and bolted after him. But terror added yards on to the
Lumberman s normal sprinting form and he main
tained his lead. Just as he vanished, Mr. Foster picked
up a chair with great dexterity and slung it after him.
The chair missed, however, and went through a plate-
glass window, with a crash that restored everyone s
good humour.

Then came the cream of the evening s entertain
ment, the Rassle Royal. Five wrestlers in the Ring
simultaneously, all against all, no time limit, and the
survivor wins. We all lay back in our seats and a sort
of sigh of content ran round the Hall.

The five heroes were: Finky Nelson, a mild and in
offensive youth, short of stature and with square shoul
ders; Mike Muldooney; John (Whiskers) Moses, a
large man in a green vest and adorned with an enor
mous black beard. Mr. Moses was the champion and
idol of the local House of David; the Black Jaguar was
the fourth, a lissom, elegant negro with a coppery skin
that looked as if it had been polished with Sirnoniz,
sleek hair, and a dazzling smile; and lastly, a tall,
superciliously self-confident man, with long sinewy
arms, the redoubtable, hated, feared, Totem-Pole
Johnson.

Ref. Foster sprang into the Ring and the Rassle
Royal was on. It was the wildest chaos. There were no
allies, no prearranged partnerships. I had imagined
that the other four would make a dead-set at the ter
rible Totem-Pole and eliminate him at once, but noth-

158 A VISIT TO AMERICA

ing of the sort happened. At first Mike seemed to be
getting the short end of the straw, with three of them
kneeling on him, but the Jaguar created a diversion by
yielding to his fatal sense of humour. Mr. Moses s mas
sive posterior was irresistibly extended towards him
and the Jaguar, with a vast grin., kicked it sharply and
fled, hotly pursued by the Ref. and the injured party.
Then Finky seemed to be in trouble but was saved by
a sudden attempt by the Totem-Pole and the Son of
David to eliminate the Jaguar, who only escaped by
dodging out of the ring. When he came back, the
other four were jumbled in one mass of arms and legs
on the floor, so the Jaguar contributed his little bit of
fun by taking a running high-jump and landing on the
top of the heap. But the pace was too hot to last, and
the black-bearded champion of the House of David
was the first to go, with a broken arm. Then Mul-
dooney made his fatal mistake. In side-stepping the
Totem-Pole, he came down heavily on the Ref. s toe.
With a hoarse cry of pain, the Ref. tripped him up, and
the other three fell on him with a whoop, and he was
out. Then Finky and the Totem-Pole, feeling perhaps
that blood will tell, combined against the Jagaur who,
after racing twenty or thirty times round outside the
ring, was persuaded to return and was duly anni
hilated.

That left only poor little Finky and the Totem-Pole,
with his superior smile and his octopus arms, to wrestle
two falls out of three. Amid explosions of wrath and
thunders of cat-calls, the Totem-Pole soon demolished

A VISIT TO AMERICA 159

Finky and won the first fall. But in the second bout
he made, probably through over-confidence, a fatal
slip, and in a trice Finky had him in the deadliest of all
locks. He had got hold of the Totem-Pole s ankles and
was whirling him round and round as if he was
Nijinsky and Mr. Johnson was Karsavina. Higher
and higher he swung the unfortunate Totem and then
dashed the back of his head on the boards as if he was
using a hammer to drive in a nail.

In the third round the Totem-Pole was completely
dazed, and in a jiffy Finky had him by the ankles
again, whirled him round again, and dashed his head
on the boards again, and the Rassle Royal was over.
Little Finky Nelson had won.

The news soon spread round Helena and its en
virons that I had so conspicuously mastered the art of
placer-mining that I had actually panned four grains
in an hour and twenty minutes, and it was generally
felt in Northwestern metallurgical circles that I might
as well devote an hour or two to acquiring a similar
mastery over the allied technique of quartz-mining
and large-scale dredging, and, if time permitted, over
the indispensable business of smelting.

Accordingly, my hospitable host and hostess ar
ranged for an excursion to the mining-town of Marys-
ville, situated in the mountains above Helena.

We started off towards the west, and motored along
Prickly Pear Valley (which is sometimes called Scratch

l66 A VISIT TO AMERICA

Gravel Valley), a dry plain covered with sage-grass,
until we came to the real mountains. The valley-walls
close in on each side, and grew steeper and rockier.
Below the road was the dried-up bed of a river full of
crimson-stemmed willows that made a fine show of
colour against the drab pines and grey stones, and sud
denly we turned a corner and there, at the junction of
five valleys, was the Ghost City, the mining-camp of
Marysville.

It was some time about 1878 that the illiterate Irish
man, Tommy Cruse, came over the hills from Silver
Creek where he had been placer-mining, and found
the famous mine which he christened the Drum Lum-
mon. Old Tommy Cruse could neither read nor write,
but he knew the value of a mine when he saw it, and
he ultimately sold the Drum Lummon to an English
company for $1,500,000 and, because he distrusted
cheques, he insisted on being paid at least half a mil
lion in gold dollars. It was the finding of this great
mine that made Marysville, and a town, built of stone
and slate, sprang up around the dotted log-and-plaster
cabins, and the railroads came up the valley from
Helena.

But it did not last, and the town dwindled and
dwindled. The younger, more adventurous spirits
packed their tools and set out to find new prospects, the
older ones stayed on and died one by one, until only the
shell of a town was left, and the slates began to fall
from the roof of the Baptist chapel, and skunks and
rabbits scuttled in and out of the derelict saloons, and

A VISIT TO AMERICA 161

birds made their nests in the store, and the paint flaked
off the door of the Masonic Hall.

It was a strange sensatioa, wandering on the grassy
streets of this dead town. Names are still faintly
legible on some of the shops; here there is an adver
tisement for caps, eight dollars each; there is a notice
on a saloon of some passing troupe of entertainers;
faded lettering and figures announce that the Masonic
Hall was built in 1884; the tiny churches, Episcopalian,
Presbyterian, and Baptist, are decaying, and the school
is empty, and one small wooden hut is labelled "Bar
ber: Baths."

I spoke to an old lady who had lived in Marysville
for forty-eight years, and had not left it even in its days
of desolation. She was a beautiful old lady, with clear,
blue eyes and a comely old face and the manners of a
duchess. Her name was Mrs. Larsen.

"I saw Marysville when it was nothing," said Mrs.
Larsen, "and I saw it grow to three thousand people,
and I saw it go down to nothing again, and now I see
it coming up again. The people are coming back and
the mines are working. I saw the first school-teacher
come up the valley and begin school for the children,
and I remember the time when there were eight
teachers and a Superintendent, and then the time came
when there weren t any teachers at all, just like it was
when I was a girl. I remember when they brought the
railroad up the valley, and I remember, when every
thing was dead, how they came and took the railroad
away again."

162 A VISIT TO AMERICA

I asked if Marysville had been a very wild place in
the height of its prosperity, and was rather surprised
when Mrs. Larsen shook her head.

"Marysville was never a wild place," she said.
"There were six or eight saloons besides hotels and
cafes, but it was not wild. Not to be compared with
Helena. I had an uncle who came from the East to
Helena many, many years ago and the first thing he
saw was a man hanging on a tree at the edge of the
town. My uncle turned round and went back to the
East and never crossed the Mississippi for the rest of
his life.

"The mines are working again now/ repeated Mrs.
Larsen, "but things will never be the same again now
that the Englishmen have gone. They were splendid
employers. I wish the English were back again."

I asked her if she knew who the Mary was after
whom the town had been called. "It was Mary Ral
ston," she said at once. "Pretty Mary Ralston. She and
Ralston were among the first to come up the val
ley. He worked with Tommy Cruse after he had
found the Drum Lurnmon, and when the people came
and built houses and the town had to get a name,
Tommy called it after Mary. She s dead many a year
ago."

The air seemed to be full of ghosts as the old woman
rambled on about long-forgotten miners, and the great
days of the Pioneers. I saw two more ghosts before I
left the Ghost City. One was the stamping-mill that
crushes the Drum Lummon quartz. We knocked on

A VISIT TO AMERICA 163

various doors and, getting no answer, finally pushed one
open and went in. It was like a design by Piranesi at
tempting to make a caricature of himself. It was dark,
and ramshackle, and rickety. It was like a toy that has
been built by one generation of boys, and then added to
and added to by successive generations, haphazardly
and at random. Nothing seemed to fit anything else.
There was a perfect labyrinth of beams, bars, trap-doors,
insecure platforms, wobbly plank-bridges, shoots,
crushers, tubs, cauldrons, wheels, ropes, and pulleys.
Everything was made of wood. We wandered round,
tripping, stumbling, bumping our heads, and poising
ourselves over perilous abysses, and nobody paid the
slightest attention to us. Indeed there was no one in
the mill to pay attention to us. There was no move
ment, either human or mechanical, save in one corner
where a machine was churning up a cauldron of water.
It was a ghost of a mill.

The other ghost w r hich I saw before I left Marysville
was the blackened ruin of "the Englishman s house."
The mine-managers of the Drum Lummon had lived
there in the days of the English company, and the
house was accidentally burnt down a few years ago.
Three things they left behind them, three things that
are so much part of the English heritage and the Eng
lish tradition that they can be found all over the
world wherever the English go. A stable for their
horses, a formal garden for their flowers, and an open
fireplace.

The stable at the Drum Lummon is derelict, and the

164 A VISIT TO AMERICA

flowers have overrun the edges of their beds and have
mingled sadly with the weeds, but in all the ruin of
the house itself, where no brick rests upon any other
brick, the open fireplace stands up proudly and unde
feated, as much a part of the Mother-country as Wind
sor Castle or the Tower of London.

I finished off my metallurgical education before
turning aside to master the intricacies of Montana s
other great trade sheep and cattle and visited a large
dredge that was working in a river away below the
town, and the local smelting works. The dredge was
placer-mining on a huge, mechanized scale. The river
had been gone over and over by pioneers and China
men, but the dredge worked so fast and scooped out
such masses of gravel at each dive into the muddy
water, that it could make a profit at five cents of gold
per ton. But this noisy, prosaic, dull machine takes all
the Romance out of mining and reduces an individual
art to clumsy mass-production, and after a few minutes
I left it to its prosaic task.

My visit to the smelting-works was interesting for
two reasons. One reason was that it was the first
smelter I had seen in America. Later on, I discovered
that it is the ambition of every American man but
not, I am thankful to say, of every American woman
to take visitors over the local smelting-works. It is
almost an obsession. Over and over again I have taken
part in the following dialogue, and on each occasion
the words of the dialogue have been practically identi
cal.

A VISIT TO AMERICA 165

KIND HOST: Now what would you like to do to-day?

MYSELF: I should like to walk around and have a look
at your city.

KIND HOST: Fine! I ve got the automobile at the door and
we ll drive out to see the smelting-works. Would you like
to see the smelting-works?

MYSELF (as tactfully as possible) : I d sooner walk in the
town

KIND HOST: Fine! Well go out to the smelter at once.

MYSELF: I think I d sooner not. I ve seen lots o smelters
already.

KIND HOST: Oh, but you must see our smelter. You ll
like our smelter.

MYSELF (almost in tears) : I don t want to see any
smelter.

KIND HOST: It s no trouble at all. It s a pleasure for me.
Jump right in, and we ll go and see the smelter. (7 jump
right in t and we go off to see the smelter.)

As I say, this was the invariable procedure, and I
must have visited dozens of smelters during my travels
in the western States of the Union. At least it certainly
seemed to be dozens, and I fancy that I am probably
the finest amateur smelter alive to-day.

But it was different at Helena. I had not yet been
through the mill, so to speak. And the second reason
why I was interested at Helena was the personality of
the manager. Although American-born of American-
born parents, he was a Scot of Scots. He was a young
man, in the middle thirties^ and he looked like a High
lander, and he thought like a Highlander, and he bore

166 A VISIT TO AMERICA

a fine old Highland name. By the Grace of Heaven,
his clan was one that had been for some centuries in
friendly alliance with mine (they became friendly after
a stormy beginning), and so we were able to talk to
each other. Had he been a Campbell, or even a Mac-
Gregor, I might be one smelter short in my experience.
But fortunately for both of us, he was not, and I was
able to go round the works and listen to his crystal-
clear explanations of highly technical processes and
watch the sequence of events by which a heap of dull-
looking soil is transmuted into a shining, splashing,
silvery torrent of molten lead.

Having thus acquired a sound knowledge of the
science of Metallurgy, I turned back to the wide-open
spaces and went off to see the sheep-country.

It was a long drive up into the mountains. We
passed Silver City, a proud municipality that contains
three houses, Canyon Creek City which has two houses
less than Silver City, and Georgeville. Georgeville has
no houses at all, but there are four logs lying by the
roadside where Georgeville used to be. On each side
of the road there were innumerable traces of mining,
washing, and prospecting, some of them old and moss-
grown, many of them obviously brand-new.

The road went up and up through the canyons. A
few cottonwood trees still wore their last, lingering,
golden leaves, but the fir-trees darkened the scene
with their sombre foliage, and even the masses of red

A VISIT TO AMERICA 167

willows and the green-yellow* glittering trunks of the
leafless aspens could not relieve the shadowy gloom of
these narrow defiles through the rocks. Once or twice
we climbed a canyon whose precipitous walls were
streaked with red and purple streaks where the ice had
passed slowly by, but in the main the colouring was
drab. It was like Browning s "great wild country"
where

at a funeral pace
Round about, solemn and slow,
One by one, row after row,
Up and up the pine-trees go,
So, like black priests up, and so
Down the other side again . . .

And then the automobile climbed a last slope in the
long ascent and ran out on to a level patch of road and
stopped. We were at the Continental Divide, six thou
sand feet up. The air was clear and fresh and full of
the scent of the pines, and very silent. Below us lay
the Pacific side, and the valley far down was greener
and lighter than on the Atlantic side, and the grass was
riper and the trees were gayer. In the distance storm-
clouds were gathering, and high above them, high into
the blueness, soared the full cold splendour of the
Rocky Mountains.

We dropped down the Pacific slope of the Divide
and came to a sheep-farm among the woods. There
was a bustle of activity round the log-cabins, and
horses were being saddled, and packs were being

168 A VISIT TO AMERICA

loaded, for the weekly pack-train was about to start on
its round o the lonely sheep-herders on the hillsides.
These men, mostly Roumanians, live all by them
selves for month after month and year after year, until
they have acquired such a habit of solitude that they
will often walk away if a stranger seems likely to open
a conversation with them, and on the rare occasions
when they find themselves in company will sit in im
penetrable silence for hours. Once in every two or
three years they will draw all their savings (and they
have been earning fifty dollars a month and all found,
with no opportunity of spending) and go into the near
est town, and within a week they will have been
robbed of every cent, usually by brother-Roumanians,
and then they will go back to another two or three
years of solitude on their sheep-range.

As my hostess appeared to be anxious to take a
photograph of a Scottish traveller in a place where few
Scottish travellers had penetrated for some years, the
men who were harnessing the pack-train suggested
eagerly that I should pose for the camera seated on the
back of the leading horse of the pack-train. Unwilling
to disgrace my country by seeming to be reluctant for
any adventure, I put as good a face upon it as I could,
and prepared to mount. But there was something so
eager, so expectant, so all-on-tiptoe, about the attitude
of the sheepmen, that I paused for a moment. They
were like children waiting for the curtain to rise at
their pantomime. Foot in the stirrup, I asked them
what was up. They looked confused and embarrassed,

A VISIT TO AMERICA 169

more like children than ever, and finally one of them
explained that the last time anyone had mounted that
particular horse, it had bolted into the woods, and the
rider had lost all the skin off his face, and they were
curious to know if it would happen again. In all the
age-long history of horsemanship, I do not suppose that
any foot has ever come out of any stirrup more quickly
than mine did, and the subsequent photograph was
taken of a Scottish gentleman standing firmly upon
the ground, grasping the horse s bridle, and in full pos
session of all the skin on his face. The sheepmen were
bitterly disappointed.

We left the sheep-farm in the woods and I shall
never forget the mixture of scents in that warm, wind
less valley, the pungent, acrid smell of the sheep, the
scent of the pines, and the drifting smoke from the
wood-fire in the log-cabin and motored on to the
ranch itself, and there an ambition of more than thirty
years standing was realized. I met a real, old-time,
pioneering cowboy.

He was a small, thin, brown man, very wiry, very
silent, and almost ninety years old. In 1870 Mr. S.
came first to Montana and those were tough days in
the Northwest. It was only six years after the Vigi
lantes had cleaned up the road-agents and hanged the
iniquitous Sheriff Henry Plummer and his gang of
desperadoes at Bannack City, and eight years before
Chief Joseph led the Nez Perce Indians to battle on
the banks of the Clearwater River. In the old days of
the "national domains/ Mr. S. had wandered with

170 A VISIT TO AMERICA

his cattle from pasturage to pasturage for thirty-five
years. "I just pirated around/ said Mr. S. And then,
when the days of wandering were over and the settlers
began to acquire the domains and the era of private
ownership began, Mr. S. bought land and became a
ranch-owner.

I asked him about the Indians, hoping against hope
for tales of desperate encounters, of hideous torture
heroically endured, of tremendous rides across the
mountains to warn outlying farms that the Chiefs were
on the War Path, of stubborn defences of stockades-,
of grim discoveries of the scalped bodies of old pals.
But Mr. S. was sadly prosaic about it all. "I did a big
ride once," he admitted, "when Chief Joseph was out
in these parts, to warn my brother, and I found him
sound asleep in his camp as if there wasn t an Indian
in Montana. But there never was much danger from
Indians. Sometimes in the night a creeper would try
to get up close, but in the daytime we just used to
signal to them to keep away."

"And they kept away?" I asked sadly.

"Oh, yes," replied Mr. S.

"Simply because of a signal?" I asked in despair.

"Oh, yes," replied Mr. S. "You see, most of them
were cowards. *

I changed the subject.

"Montana must be very different to what it used to
be," I said, and Mr. S. agreed.

"In the days when Chief Joseph was out/ 5 said Mr.
S., "I used to ride everywhere. Then the roads came,

A VISIT TO AMERICA 171

and I was able to take the wagon up to the ranch. After
that the railroad came to Helena, and then we all
bought automobiles. But now I find it best to fly up to
the ranch."

Mr. S. was eighty-two when he flew for the first
time, but now there is a regular landing-ground at the
ranch. The Spirit of the Pioneers dies hard.

Looking at this broad, peaceful, grassy valley in the
mountains, with its flocks of grazing sheep, its snug
buildings, its garage, its flying-ground, its roads, I found
it extraordinarily difficult to realize that its whole his
tory is covered by the span of a single life. Mr. S. was
nearly twenty years of age when the first owner of the
ranch was murdered by the Indians with all his chil
dren and his Indian wife (an iron railing encloses the
grave, and the man who lugged an iron railing all
those miles up into the mountains was one of great
piety or great craziness), and there was Mr. S. skipping
nimbly over ditches, flying round the country in aero
planes, and trying to bamboozle vagrant Scotsmen
into "sitting in to a little poker-game." With native
caution I declined to be blandished into his little poker-
game, and I was told afterwards that I was extremely
wise. For Mr. S. was a demon at the game.

On our way back into Helena, between intermi
nable fields of short grass and sagebrush, smelling
strongly after a shower of rain, and the comical tum-
bleweed that goes bowling along in the wind like
diminutive haystacks that are playing hookey, we came
round a bend in the road, and there below us were the

172 A VISIT TO AMERICA

waters of the Missouri,, shining very blue in the sun
between the dark cliffs of the defile which Lewis and
Clark called the Gates of the Mountains when they
came up on their immortal journey. Near by I found
an election appeal which beat any that I had yet dis
covered. Mr. Frank H., running for District Judge on
an Independent ticket, pledged himself to secure "bet
ter conditions for Labour, Farmers, and hard pressed
Debtors, without regard to refined technicalities." If
ever a man deserved election it was Frank. He would
have had my vote every time. Would that there were
more like him, both in the United States and in Great
Britain.

There is a mining-camp in Montana which embodies
in its name a very strange piece of literary apprecia
tion and judgment. In a deep, narrow, sunless canyon
in the mountains lies an old wooden village, once
prosperous like Marysville, then a ghost, and now re
viving again. At first it was called Red Mountain.
Then, presumably, a miner named Russell struck a rich
vein and his influence became powerful, for the name
was changed to Russellville. Incidentally it is curious
that he should have been so much more successful at
giving a name to a camp than to his children. He
found no difficulty about Russellville, but he was sorely
bothered about his family. For he was very anxious
to launch them into the world with a proper quota of
two names apiece, but his small supply ran out and he

A VISIT TO AMERICA 173

was compelled to christen one of them "L. George
Russell," the L. not standing for anything at all. The
Russell star must have waned. Perhaps his mining
operations petered out, perhaps he grew so rich that he
left the district. Anyway, Russellville became Clark-
ston for a while. Then the influence of Clark declined
before an inrush of new settlers, and Clarkston became
Young Ireland. Now comes the strange episode in
which the Poetical Drama suddenly hurtled into the
rough lives of this tiny community. One day, many
years ago, the news arrived at this lonely canyon that a
touring company of actors was billed for a theatrical
performance in Helena. Such visits must have been
rare in the old days, and the miners of Young Ireland
determined to make a gala occasion out of this one.
They put on their smartest clothes, saddled their horses,
and rode off to Helena. Next day they came galloping
back in a roaring, exalted, frantic state of enthusiasm.
The play which they had seen had been an unforget
table moment in their lives, and Young Ireland was to
be Young Ireland no longer. The miners, their heads
aflame with Romance and Poesy, rechristened their
mining-camp Rimini, for the playwright of the piece
was Stephen Phillips and the play was "Paolo and
Francesca." And so to this day the little mining-camp
is called, with the accent heavily on the last syllable,
after the ancient city of the MalatestL

Just as I had the luck to meet, In Mr. S., an Old-
Timer of the cattle-ranges, so in Rimini I met an Old-
Timer of the mining-camps. In a tiny, one-roomed,

174 A VISIT TO AMERICA

wooden shack, warmed by a stove and lit by an old oil-
lamp, decorated with calendars of decades ago and
advertisements of long-forgotten wares, sat old Jack
Kelly, cooking his evening meal. Eighty-five years of
age, his face and neck were seamed and lined and
criss-crossed with wrinkles, and browned by the winds
and storms to the colour of stained oak. His hands
were thin and hard and almost black, and the skin
was drawn so tightly across the knuckles that it
shone in the lamplight and his bristly head of close-
cut iron-grey hair was without a trace of baldness. He
wore corduroy trousers that looked as if they were
made of the same material as his face and neck,
and a purple coat with ragged fringes. I do not think
I ever saw a man who was so thin and frail. His bones
were pushing out against his skin.

But old Jack Kelly has no complaints against his
poverty or his thinness. Every morning of his life he
gets up and cooks his own breakfast, saddles his horse
and rides up the Red Mountain to his Prospect, works
there all day and rides home in the evening to his hut,
carrying his day s ore for the smelter.

I asked him if he had always been a miner. "Al
ways," he said, "ever since I went into the lead-mines
in Wisconsin when I was seven years old. My father
was a lead-miner and he brought us up on mining.
Seventy-eight years I ve been at it." A ghost of an
ancient smile flickered on his thin cracked lips and a
glint of light shone for a moment in the peering eyes,
"And so no wonder I ve known all my life that I

A VISIT TO AMERICA 175

would make my fortune mining. I haven t made it
yet, but I will though. I m going to make a big strike
in this mountain here."

The ghostly smile hovered again as he looked at my
companion, the manager of the big mine in the can
yon. "The old days were the days/ he said. "Now
adays those that mine go about it in a way that would
make a horse laugh. Why, I remember things done in
Nevada that you ll never see now/ and he rambled off
into tales of forgotten miners and men that had been
dead for generations, of fabulous strikes and squan
dered millions, of copper in New Mexico, and silver in
Nevada, of gold-rushes and fortunes made and lost,
The smoky, ill-lit cabin seemed to be peopled with the
shades of the heroes of a lost saga as the old man
drifted on. He had forgotten all about us, and was liv
ing in a dead past among his dead friends. Names and
places eddied vaguely around us: Sun Mountain, the
Gould and Curry, Judge Turner, Virginia City, Bill
Stewart, Kern River, a thousand to the ton, Calu
met . . .

I do not think old Jack noticed our departure when
we left. He was still lost in the days when he, and the
West, were young.

I went across to the town of Butte to watch Helena
playing Butte at football.

Butte is without exception the least pleasing town
which I have ever seen. It is worse than Gary, or

176 A VISIT TO AMERICA

Sheffield, or a Welsh mining town, or the slums of
Glasgow, or anything in the Ruhr valley. Butte is
uglier, and dirtier, and more blatantly sordid than any
of them.

And the country round is an unspeakable desolation.
In the old days of "rugged individualism," the roaring
days of Butte when Heinze, the brilliant young Jew,
was fighting Amalgamated Copper and Standard Oil
together, anyone who pleased could set up a smelter
and flood the land with sulphur fumes, and the result
to-day is the barren wilderness of the mountain-slopes
around Butte. No trees grow on them or grass or any
living thing. It is a nightmare of a country. If you
substitute the words "mountain range" for the word
"plain," Browning s description of the Duke s country
perfectly fits Butte and its surroundings :

. . . one vast red drear burnt-up plain,
Branched through and through with many a vein
Whence iron s dug, and copper s dealt;

Look right, look left, look straight before,
Beneath they mine, above they smelt,

Copper-ore and iron-ore,
And forge and furnace mould and melt,

And so on, more and ever more . . .

The hill itself has a certain grim fascination. It is
so completely more monstrous in its hideousness than
any other hill, and at the same time so fantastic in the
wealth of its minerals, that at least it possesses the
quality of uniqueness. There is no other hill in the
world like it, with its four thousand miles of under-

A VISIT TO AMERICA 177

ground workings, its unbelievable richness in gold,
silver, copper, manganese, oil, and coal, and its story of
the terrific seven years war that was fought in its tun
nels by the miners of the rival companies.

The football game was even less like Rugby football
and even more like the World War than the Princeton-
Williams game. There were periods when the ball lay,
neglected and ignored, upon the ground for several
minutes at a time while the players discussed their out
standing differences with some violence. And pro
ceedings were enlivened, although enlivenment was
hardly necessary, by an extremely intoxicated supporter
of the Butte interest who kept on imploring the Butte
team, in a terrific voice, to go back to copper-mining,
and occasionally varying the appeal with the plaintive
inquiry, "What s wrong with Dublin Gulch?" It ap
pears that Dublin Gulch is a tough locality, even
judged by the standards of Butte.

After the battle was over I went, with a heavy heart,
to the railroad station (or was it deepo?) to catch the
express for the south and leave the enchanted State of
open hearts and magical blue mountains.

I had a miserable journey. The food in the Dining-
Car was execrable, I had a splitting headache after so
much Montanan hospitality, and as I was tossing to
and fro in my bunk I remembered that I had left my
hat, the only really handsome black felt hat in the
whole of the United States, in the Dining-Car and that
the Dining-Car was bound for Portland, Oregon,
whereas I was heading for Salt Lake City.

CHAPTER TEN

"Crossing the great desert, the alkaline plains, I beheld enchanting mirages
of waters and meadows.*

WALT WHITMAN.

SALT LAKE CITY has fascinated me ever since I read,
many, many years ago, Conan Doyle s "Study in Scar
let," the tale of Jefferson Hope, the Latter Day Saints,
the Avenging Angels, Brigham Young and the Great
Alkali Plain. The fascination lay partly, I admit, in the
fact that it contained the debut of Mr. Sherlock
Holmes. But Dr. Watson s descriptions of the Utah
scene was enough to fire the imagination of any child.
"The coyote skulks among the scrub," wrote the doc
tor, "the buzzard flaps heavily through the air, and the
grizzly bear lumbers through the dark ravines, and
picks up such sustenance as it can among the rocks.
These are the sole dwellers in the wilderness." I used
to lie awake in my nursery, thinking of the "three
solemn buzzards who uttered raucous screams of dis
appointment and flapped sullenly away," and of the
newly dug grave in the canyon on the road to Carson
City, and I have been determined for years to visit the
strange and famous City on the shore of the Great Salt
Lake. And that, of course,, was where I got my first

178

A VISIT TO AMERICA 179

shock, for the City is by no means on the shore of the
Lake. It is a good fifteen or twenty miles away. How
ever, the disappointment caused by that was soon com
pensated by the magnificence of the site of the town.
Whatever the virtues or vices of Brigham Young may
have been, whatever his attainments and limitations,
there is one thing that can be said about him he knew
where to put his City at the end of the long pilgrimage.
It must have been a profoundly moving moment when
the little band came struggling down Pioneers Can
yon, and Young looked at the great plain in its horse
shoe of purple mountains and said, simply, "This is
the place." Those four words, and his name, and the
date July 2, 1847, are all that is carved on the monu
ment at the foot of the Canyon, and they are more
impressive in their simplicity than any oratorical or
classical inscription could be.

After reporting the loss of my hat to the railroad
officials, I did the accepted round of the Temple build
ings, listened to the perfervid description of Mormon-
ism and its doctrines from the guide, of which I could
not understand a word, heard the famous pin drop in
the great Hall (and was exceedingly sceptical about
the genuineness of the acoustical phenomenon) and
examined, with an alarm that almost verged on terror,
the hideous statues of Joseph Smith and Hyrum Smith
in the Temple gardens among the dahlias, the mari
golds. But the monument to the seagulls touches the
heart, and the guide told us all for by this time I had
somehow got entangled in a large party of sightseers

180 A VISIT TO AMERICA

the strange story of how the grasshoppers came and
devoured the crops of the early settlers and how, in
despair, the starving community prayed for Divine
assistance, and how the seagulls came up in thousands
from the Salt Lake and annihilated the grasshoppers.
I gathered that it is a good deal safer to kill a man in
Utah, even in this year of grace, nearly a hundred
years after, than to shoot a seagull.

The statue of Brigham Young stands at the cross
roads outside the precincts of the Temple, and has been
orientated in the true tradition of American statues.
Just as Liberty has her back to America, and Orpheus
at Baltimore has his back, and rightly, to the spot
where Francis Scott Key wrote the unfortunately im
mortal "Star-Spangled Banner," so Brigham Young
has his back to the Temple and his hand outstretched
towards one of the local banks. Not that he need
stretch out his hand to a bank. The Mormon Church
needs no overdraft. Every good Latter Day Saint
voluntarily gives one-tenth of his income to the
Church, and its wealth is prodigious.

I took a taxi and drove round the town and mar
velled at the breadth and magnificence of its planning.
They were better at town-planning in 1847, those rough
hardy men, than anyone is nowadays, and the automo
biles can park two deep on each side of the Main
Street that Brigham Young s mathematical colleague
designed, and still leave room for six or eight cars to
drive abreast in between. Running water from moun
tain springs keeps the gutters clean, and fills the pool

A VISIT TO AMERICA 181

in Liberty Park, Brigham Young s farm that he be
queathed to the community.

Salt Lake City is a city of many memories. The
wall of the Temple is on the exact line where the set
tlers heaped up their earth wall as a defence against
the Indians in 1847; a monument on the sidewalk in
Main Street marks the site of a station of the Pony
Express; in the museum in the Capitol is preserved
Young s covered wagon and in Liberty Park is his log-
cabin and his mill; outside Young s house are the
stones to which the Elders of the Church used to tie
their horses when they came to the council.

But the strangest of all is Brigham Young s tomb.
Remember that the Mormons are Americans and there
fore not desperately anxious to retire their lights under
modest bushels. Remember that they are all bursting
with pride at their astonishing achievement. Remem
ber that the money-bags of the Church are bulging
with dollars. And remember that advertisement for
the further expansion and glory of the Church is a
ruling passion. Then, when you have got these four
ideas into your head, imagine what a Mausoleum of
splendour and ostentation must mark the last resting-
place of the man who brought them through the wil
derness and laid the foundations of the Church upon
so strong a base.

You will have a job to find Young s tomb. It is in
a tiny graveyard in a side-street, railed off with a low
railing, guarded by a locked gate, and marked with no
label or sign post. The grave itself has no name on it,

182 A VISIT TO AMERICA

and straggly, untidy creepers clamber over the massive
stone slab. Some of his wives lie in the same small
burial-ground. Their graves bear their, names. Young
is alone in his magnificent anonymity. Whatever he
may have been in life and controversy rages round
him in death at any rate he showed greatness by be
ing "as content with six foot as the Moles of Adrianus."
His tomb is shabby and creeper-covered, but his me
morial lies all round him, the city which he made and
the State which he founded.

I was standing by the anonymous stone and looking
out across the smoky city for Salt Lake is a city of
coal-burnerswhen a voice broke in upon me.

"Were you ever in Huddersfield?" it said, unex
pectedly.

I turned round, and there was my taxi-driver.

"I was two years on a Mission in Huddersfield and
Bradford," he went on chattily. "Never enjoyed my
self so much in my life."

"Mission?" I said. "What sort of Mission?"

"Why, a Mission for the Church," the taxi-driver
replied, and he explained to me the system by which
young Mormons go abroad for a couple of years, and
preach at street corners and in villages and in high
ways and byways, in European cities and in Samoan
islands, in Christian lands and in partibus infidelium,
expounding the Word of the Lord as it was revealed
to Joseph Smith at Palmyra on September 22, 1827.

"Do they pay your expenses ?" I asked.

"No. You have to find your own expenses," said

A VISIT TO AMERICA 183

the taxi-driver, and I began to see that President Young
bequeathed more to the Church than Liberty Park.
For the President combined a fanatical belief in Mor-
monism with a very nice appreciation of the material
advantages which may be found in this world, and
he was able to preach his version of the Christian doc
trines without being a whit worried by the scriptural
injunction to sell that thou hast, and give to the
poor. When Brigham Young died, he left two and
a half million dollars to seventeen wives and his fifty-
six children. Following dutifully in his footsteps,
the Church relies on volunteer missionaries and only
pays the expenses of new Saints from distant parts who
are too poor to travel to Utah. The large hotel which
I stayed in, and the large stores in which I did my
shopping, both belonged to the Church.

It is an odd circumstance that the only thing which
anyone knows about the Mormons is not true. They
are not polygamists and have not been for at least
forty years. But in Great Britain at any rate, even to
well-educated people the word "Mormon" means a
polygamist and nothing else.

I was able to reflect on all this and much more dur
ing my drive to the smelting-works and the copper-
mine at Bingham. For I need hardly say that after
resolutely declining to visit either of them, I was put
into an automobile and driven out to visit both of
them. As it turned out, the copper-mine was interest
ing enough, for it is not a mine at all but a solid hill
side which is being steadily blasted away. Already half

184 A VISIT TO AMERICA

of it has gone and a gigantic semicircle, like a Greek
theatre, has been hollowed out of the mountain. It is
a most spectacular sight, for the quartz, or whatever
it is, is white and the minerals in it make a dazzling
display of greens and yellows and peacock-blues and
golds and silvers. But, beautiful though it was, I did
not dally overlong. Blasting was in full swing, and
there were notices everywhere of the danger from fall
ing stones, and the air was full of warlike sounds.

So I fled back, down the steep little street in the
canyon, lined with Swiss chalets and shacks, and peo
pled with Italians and Greeks and Japs and Germans
and Chinamen, into the safety of the dry, flat plain. As
I scuttled down I caught a glimpse of a shop which
advertised itself as Christ s Grocery and Sugar Stores,
so the visit was not a dead loss.

Then came, of course, the usual visit to the smelter,
but, curiously enough, the folks of Salt Lake City are
more hospital-conscious than smelter-conscious. Every
trip in an automobile which I took invariably ended
up at the handsome new War-hospital on the top of
the hill behind the town. I do not think my hosts
were animated by any other motive than Civic Pride.
Had it been a Mental Home I might have grown sus
picious at the perpetually recurring visits, but I could
detect no suggestion of this kind on the bland faces of
my friends.

It was in Salt Lake City that I made my first con
tact with the Young Republican movement. I had
heard, vaguely, when I was in the East, of the uprising

A VISIT TO AMERICA 185

of the youth of the shattered Republican party, but
somehow the stranger in New York does not encounter
very much in the big political line. New York, so far
as National politics is concerned, seemed to me to be
rather like London, which is politically the dullest
and most apathetic community in Great Britain. But
it was not until I reached Utah that I met, for the first
time, young men who were burning with the fire of
Crusaders, who were devoting all their spare time and
energies to the two sacred Causes of overthrowing
President Roosevelt and of purging Republicanism so
it should become something worthy to be battled for
by young men and women.

I listened for hours to young men talking. I do not
say that they were especially constructive, or that they
did not repeat a good many platitudes, or that they had
more ideas than words. But their eyes were filled with
a burning light and their hands trembled with sin
cerity and emotion. It seemed to me that I was listen
ing to something new, and at the same time to some
thing that was nearly two hundred years old, when
phrases filled the air like the Bill of Rights . . . We
must go back to the Declaration of Independence . . .
Sanctity of Contracts ... the Confidence of the Gov
erned . . . Principles of true Democracy . . .

It is always a rash, and usually a stupid, thing for a
foreigner to open his mouth when the internal politics
of somebody else s country are being discussed, and so
I only asked one very mild question: "Has the Young
Republican movement always been like this?"

l86 A VISIT TO AMERICA

"Of course not/ my young friends answered. "In
the past the people who ought to have been guiding
us, what you in England call the Ruling Classes, were
too busy making money. They left politics to the pro
fessionals, on the sure understanding that the Republi
cans would always win the Presidential Election.
Roosevelt has changed all that. He s given us such a
jolt that we ve got awake at last. In the long run, if
he doesn t completely smash the country first, Roose
velt is the best friend that the Republican party has
ever had. And in the long run also, Depression has
been a good friend to us, though it is a bit hard to
convince a busted millionaire of that. But we re all
alive now, and we re going to make the Republican
party the greatest -political power for Good that any
country has ever known."

After they had shown me their committee-rooms
and given me sheaves of pamphlets, they rushed off to
address meetings and organize campaigns which were
to bring the inevitable, irresistible Victory to their Cru
sade.

I strolled back to my hotel where I found a telegram
to say that my hat had been last seen passing through
Portland, Oregon, and moving in a northwesterly di
rection, and that further bulletins would be issued
later.

That evening I dined at an Italian restaurant on
Main Street and was excited when I found that the
wine-list offered several Sauternes, a Chablis, and a
Riesling. There are many capital drinks to be made

A VISIT TO AMERICA 187

out of rye whisky, but I was sadly missing my bottle
of wine at dinner. On many occasions whisky is a
good drink after the second round of golf on a win
ter s day, on the stone slabs of an American Bowl dur
ing a football match, on a hillside out of a tin mug in
a snowstorm, or just before running through a heavy
barrage of 5.9 shells in a World War, in which case
it is best drunk out of the bottle at all these times and
at many others, whisky is a grand drink and has saved
many a life. But to wash down a good dinner with it
is a barbarous custom and one that would not have
been tolerated for an instant by the claret-drinkers who
first invented it and distilled it. There is one sole
exception to this rule, and that is when there is noth
ing else to drink at all, which happened to me, as
already recorded, at Billings, Montana.

It was with a loud and wine-bibulous cry, therefore,
that I waved the wine-list above my head and shouted
for the wine-waiter. None of the other diners paid
any attention to me. Nobody ever pays any attention
in America. I never met such a people in my life for
minding their own business. It is positively uncanny.
If I had led a pink elephant down Main Street in Salt
Lake City or anywhere else, I doubt if anyone would
have done more than throw a casual glance at me, and
the only difference it would make to the life of the
place would probably be the erection of a notice-board
or two, a few hours later, saying, "Pink elephants
parked here, 5oc."

The Proprietor, a charming Italian, paid attention

l88 A VISIT TO AMERICA

to my cries, however, and within a moment all my
hopes were dashed. For the Sauternes were Califor
nian, and the Chablis was Californian, and the Ries
ling was Californian, and even the "Sparkling Mo
selle" was Californian. As a matter of fact they made
a very pleasant drinking I tried them all before I left
the City but they were not the wines of France or
Germany. Incidentally, I never could understand why
the prices of California wine are so relatively high in
America. A dollar and a half is a great deal to pay
for what is, after all, a wine of no international dis
tinction. During my visit to the United States I drank
quite a lot of Californian wine, but I would have drunk
a great deal more if it had cost, perhaps, thirty cents a
bottle, for, as I say, it is quite palatable stuff. In France
they can sell local vin ordinaire at a franc and a half
per litre, and a franc and a half at par is somewhere
about seven cents. Surely then California could pro
duce a vin ordinaire to sell at thirty or forty. If she
did, she would gradually build up a great community
of wine-drinkers who at present prefer to send five
dollars (minus the revenue-duty, of course) to my na
tive country for a bottle of Scotch, rather than a dol
lar and a half to California for a bottle of "Sauterne."
Naturally I do not complain at the ceaseless flow of
dollars into Scotland, but I think it is curious. And
why on earth do they ape the European, and label
their new-world wines with old-world names? There
are plenty of lovely names in California, and I, for one,
would sooner drink a Santa Catalina or a Monterey or

A VISIT TO AMERICA 189

a Piedra Blanca than the same wine labelled Chateau
Yquem (Cal.) or Californian Mouton Rothschild or
Domestic Heritage.

However, it is no affair of mine.

I enjoyed Salt Lake City and its queer, earnest peo
ple. They talk a great deal, but you get the impression
that they mean what they say.

And there were more pretty girls to every square
yard of sidewalk in Salt Lake City than in any city I
had yet visited. The town is full of them. I asked
several people for the cause of this pleasing phenome
non, but each gave a different cause. One, an ardent
young ex-Missioner who had recently come back from
his proselytizing sojourn in foreign parts, treated it as
a matter of course. The same all-protecting Deity
which sent the seagulls, also sent the standard of
Beauty. Another, obviously a Rationalist, put it down
to the salty air from the Great Lake which, he said,
produced the dazzling colouring and the lovely skins,
while a third, a morose gentleman who was travelling
the country in an apparently vain endeavour to sell
some mechanical device for doing something or other
he explained it to me at great length in the lounge,
but I did not understand a word brightened for a
moment and said, "Ah! but you should see Kentucky,"
and retired again behind a rampart of typescript. But
whatever the cause, there is the fact. The ladies of Salt
Lake City are very beautiful.

As I was leaving to catch the early morning train to
Ogden, where I was to pick up the San Francisco

190 A VISIT TO AMERICA

express, a telegram was handed to me. It reported that
my hat was now at the railroad junction of Pocatello,
Idaho.

I changed at Ogden and was met by an excitedly
tearful station official. Brandishing a dossier of official
telegrams, he informed me with a sob in his throat
that my hat had passed through Ogden in the small
hours of the morning in the Pocatello-Salt Lake City
train, and was even now lying in the station at Salt
Lake.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The flashing and golden pageant of California,
The sudden and gorgeous drama, the sunny and ample lands,
The long and varied stretch from Puget Sound to Colorado south,
Lands bathed in sweeter, rarer, healthier air, valleys and mountain cliffs."

WALT WHITMAN.

THE Great Salt Lake, on a sunny morning when there
is no wind, is a symphony in steel and snow. The
snowy mountains come down to the very edge of it on
every side, and the reflection of the snow in the water
makes the steel more icily white, and the reflection of
the water on the mountain sides makes the snow more
steely blue. Seventy miles long and thirty across, the
lake is a vast, burnished, silent sheet. There are no
dark specks upon it where the fisherfolk ply their im
memorial trade, for there are no fish. There are no
birds to be seen and no movement of life. The salt
foam piles up against the causeway for the railroad
runs straight across the lake in thick yellow curls
and bubbles. On every side is majesty, beauty, and
utter solitude. It is a relief to reach at last the hideous,
dazzling desolation of the Great American Desert, for
there at least is an occasional raven, heavy and sinister,
flapping hither and thither in search of something
dead. It is a mystery how anything could have lived

191

Ip2 A VISIT TO AMERICA

in that endless stretch of pure white sand, unbroken
even by tufts of sage-grass or tumbleweed, but pre
sumably something must have, or the raven would not
have been searching for its poor body. Even this grim
evidence that a living creature has passed by was some
how more cheerful than the silent deadness of the
Lake.

There was rather a curious incident in the dining-
car that day. I was sitting alone at a table, reading the
Old Testament, the best companion for a solitary
journey I know, when a young lady and gentleman
took their seats opposite me, and the latter informed
me at once that they were honeymooning. I offered
my insincerest congratulations, for I did not really care
whether they were embarking upon a successful matri
monial venture or not, to which the young man
replied, "You re an Englishman, whereas I m only a
crude American." I assured him that to my way of
thinking he was a miracle of polish and culture, where
upon he laid his head upon his girl-wife s shoulder
and burst into tears. "He thinks I m only a crude
American," he kept on whimpering. "He said I was
only a crude American." The situation was really
rather ridiculous and at the same time very embarrass
ing. Everyone was looking at us, and the general feel
ing seemed to be that I had wantonly insulted a fellow
passenger. I begged the youth to accept my solemn
and personal affidavit that no such bower of chivalry
and learning had bloomed at the court of Louis XV,
that no such elegance and cosmopolitan grace had

A VISIT TO AMERICA 193

burgeoned in the Pump Room at Bath, but to no pur
pose. He sobbed as if his heart would break, and the
word "crude" drifted round the dining-car like the
crooning of a melancholy wood-pigeon. Fortunately
my position and honour were retrieved by the young
man himself. He rose to his feet with a kind of wobbly
dignity, repeated, "I m only a crude American," and
fell flat on his back among a forest of African feet.
There was a loud roar of laughter from the other
lunchers and an American businessman bought me a
high-ball.

The desert went on and on and on. The only change
in the landscape was when a few miles of dull yellow
sand lay, like a smudge left by a careless painter,
across the hard white of the rest. Sagebrush, when it
came at last, seemed a tropical and luxuriant vegeta
tion, and the first gentle slopes of downland were
precipitous ravines after the interminable flatness.

We slogged away through the dismal uplands of
Nevada, a State that is known in Great Britain for
three things only, the Comstock Lode, the pleasantly
unfussy divorce-laws, and the heavy-weight fight be
tween Jim Jeffries and Jack Johnson.

We stopped for a short time at Reno, that fabulous
town of platinum blondes, but I did not descend. I
ought to have, I know. For it must be a unique
place, even in such a country as the United States
which is full of strange places. And not so far away
is the Comstock itself,, and Virginia City, and the
Sun Mountain. But I was tired of Metallurgy. Gold-

194 A VISIT TO AMERICA

diggers and Silver-diggers, the populations respectively
of Reno and Virginia City, held small appeal for me
at the moment.

I was within a yard or two of California the Golden,
and I wanted sun and fruit and wine and laughter and
redwood-trees, all of which I had understood from
infancy were typical products of that delectable State,
and I was not to be lured away by platinum heads nor
deterred by the fear of earthquakes. Besides, if once I
left the main routes, I would never see my hat again,
the only really good black felt hat in the whole of the
North American Continent. So I missed Reno, and
went westwards into the night. Next morning I would
be basking in The Calif ornian Climate. Before I climbed
awkwardly on to my shelf in the Pullman that night,
I re-read for the fiftieth time the exquisite opening
sentence of the Railroad-Guide s description of San
Francisco: "The greatness of Rome is somehow asso
ciated whether correctly or not with the fact that
it was built on seven hills. How much greater, then,
should San Francisco be, standing on fourteen hills?"
And as I read it, I worked out the answer as I had
already worked it out forty-nine times, and for the
fiftieth time I got it to the same figure. The answer,
so it seemed to me, surely must be, "Twice." Of course
there was the possibility to be reckoned with I am not
sufficiently a mathematician to decide that in assess
ing the historical greatness of a city according to its
Coefficient of Monticulation so to speak one ought
to work by Geometrical rather than by Arithmetical

A VISIT TO AMERICA 195

Progression. But whether that be so or not, I think that
the compilers of that Railroad-Guide were lamentably
deficient in the art of advertisement. Why did they
stop at the comparison with Rome? Athens was built
on only one hill, the Acropolis, and Troy had only
Hissarlik. Is not San Francisco therefore to be reck
oned as fourteen times as great as either of them, or
better still., seven times as great as Athens and Troy put
together ? As for poor Babylon, she had no hill at all,
and therefore no Coefficient of Monticulation, and
therefore no greatness. Even Thomasville, Oklahoma,
can beat that (at least so it appears on the bathy-oro-
graphical maps of the district).

However, let us abandon the computation of San
Francisco s greatness by bathy-orographical methods,
and consider it isothermally. In other words what
about the Calif ornian Climate?

When the express arrived at last, at about eight
o clock in the morning, I was tired and grimy, hun
gry, thirsty, and stiff from lack of exercise, and pas
sionately longing for a bath. In ten minutes, I said to
myself consolingly as I descended awkwardly and pain
fully from the train, I will be lying in a piping-hot
bath in a large hotel, and the world will be a better
place. I was wrong. I was not lying in a piping-hot
bath, and the world was a much, much worse place.
For it appeared very soon that San Francisco has no
railroad station, at least not one that was of any use
to me. We had been decanted on the other side of the
bay, and had to line up and wait for a ferry-boat to

196 A VISIT TO AMERICA

take us across. A cold wind blew through the chinks
in the shed where we waited. Hunger was gnawing.
My fellow passengers looked as tousled and unshaven
to me as I have no doubt that I looked to them, while
my crude young friend sat on a bench with his head
in his hands and rocked backwards and forwards,
groaning most lugubriously. His eyes were pink and
his face light green, and the ensemble, reminiscent as
it was of some sort of vegetarian dish that has gone
wrong in the cooking and is about to be thrown away,
and rightly, was not at all pleasing.

When once we were aboard the ferry, a difficult
problem had to be settled. For there was a small break
fast-restaurant on it, with a most delicious scent of hot
coffee, and I had to decide whether to waste a raven
ing appetite on what might prove to be an indifferent
meal but would at the same time undoubtedly allay
the mordant pains from which I was suffering, or
whether to carry out my original programme and re
sist temptation till I reached my hotel, wallow in a hot
bath, shave, pick up my mail, and saunter down to a
huge and succulent breakfast like a gentleman at ease.
The second was the programme dictated by my head
and heart. But other forces, heavily acted upon by the
scent of the coffee, were at work and in a sudden
abandon of voracity I turned towards the restaurant.
At that precise moment a torrent of young, pretty,
chattering girls came swirling on to the ferry-boat and
in a twinkling every seat in the restaurant was occu
pied; about three deep, by commuters. By this time

A VISIT TO AMERICA 197

my whole internal mechanism was tuned up for the
reception of that coffee, and there was nothing for me
to do but to lean over the bulwark and swear compre
hensively at the Cosmos from the Stars in their courses,
down via San Francisco, to the humblest commuter on
the ferry.

My one consolation was the weather. The wind was
colder than ever. A thick mist was beating up across
the bay, and it was raining hard. It would have been
a bad day on the northeast coast of Scotland at the
time of the midwinter gales.

That afternoon three San Franciscan friends invited
me to play golf with them at the Berkeley Country
Club. It was a very interesting experience. I have
played golf at many places for a number of years, but
never before have I tried to swing a club and at the
same time suppress volleys of Homeric laughter. For
we played round the course in a thick white fog, and
on almost every tee one or other of my charming hosts
would say, "On an ordinary day you can see forty-eight
miles from here," or "This is the first time in twenty-
seven years that I haven t seen sixty-six miles from
this spot," or "This is our best view of all," and I
would peer diligently into the fog and try very hard
not to laugh and enquire politely in what approximate
direction I ought to strike the ball now. Throughout
that round I never saw forty-eight feet or sixty-six feet
in any direction, let alone miles. But looking back on

198 A VISIT TO AMERICA

it afterwards, I wondered whether, in not laughing
at my first experience of the Californian climate, I dis
played any greater heroism than my hosts in not
crying.

Next day we played again, and the fog had lifted
and the sun was shining and all the supreme panorama
was spread out at our feet, but somehow I felt that I
had got a hold on California for the rest of my life and
that, however great her glories, however high her des
tiny, she would never be able to look me squarely in
the face.

The three harbours of San Francisco, Sydney, and
Rio de Janeiro, are among the most powerful instru
ments of boredom which the globe-trotter wields. A
fourth used to be Niagara, but ever since Oscar
Wilde spoke of it with such marked discourtesy, it
has been, by tacit consent, allowed to sublapse from
the polite tittle-tattle of the ship s lounge. But the
harbours remain rampant examples of the devas
tating effect of anything beautiful in Nature upon the
souls of the globe-trotters. And the irritating thing
about San Francisco, at any rate, is that everything
which these semi-literate pests can say in praise of its
harbour, can only be an understatement. It is the most
beautiful thing that I have seen in my life.

I stood on that second evening on the heights of
Berkeley and looked across to the sunset which was
splashing the Pacific with all the colours in the paint
box.

Long shadows, and a heat-haze, and a faintly rising

A VISIT TO AMERICA 199

mist, and the sunset, all confused and blurred the
sharp outlines of the harbour below us, so that wooded
promontories seemed to merge with the water, and
you could not tell where the hills began and the reflec
tions began, and the islands shimmered like mirages,
and the tiny waves wandered lazily into tree-fringed
bays, and the air seemed to be full of rose-coloured dust
that glowed against the clouds of the sunset.

Sailing boats were scattered on the harbour like
sleepy butterflies and sometimes a curl of slow smoke
marked the passage of a steamer in another, unseen
corner of the immense anchorage. For the immensity
of it is overwhelming. Looking down we could see
miles and miles of the land-locked bay, stretching out
here in a long, unbroken sheet of water, vanishing
there behind an island, reappearing suddenly far in
land, almost behind us, fading yonder into the sky,
or the Pacific, or both, and yet we could not see the
main part of the harbour, where the big ships ply up
to berth and the floating caravans come in from the
Orient, and San Francisco itself was invisible.

Not every trace of man s handiwork, however, was
invisible to us. The hills away to the north were plen
tifully scattered with huge and hideous oil-tanks be
longing to some oil-company, and nearer, the suburb
of Richmond is high in the tradition of New Jersey s
worst achievements, with a full complement of rail
roads, steel-bridges, pylons, and straggly, ill-planned
building development.

I strolled back along the golf-course, bright with

200 A VISIT TO AMERICA

wild orange eschscholtzias, and sniffed the aromatic
spicy scent of burning eucalyptus wood, and then drove
down through the terraces of gay villas, beflowered,
even in the late November, with violas and petunias
and nasturtiums and camassias, and garlanded with
bougainvillaea, and on sea-level I found another beau
tiful example of America s above-ground traction.
Built, I should think, about 1770, five or six mammoth
scarlet cars clank gaily down the middle of the road
for miles and miles to the ferry where I had suffered
so much on the previous day. In high good humour,
partly conduced by the golf, partly by the harbour
and the sunset and the flowers, partly by the street-
railway (always a certain winner with me), and partly
by the turkey, plum-pudding, rye, and quite admirable
liqueur with which my host in Berkeley had regaled
me, I returned to my hotel and found that a very im
portant change had taken place during my absence. I
had been elected an honorary member of the famous
Bohemian Club and had been invited to occupy a
suite of rooms in the Club s magnificent new building.
From this moment my life in San Francisco became
lost in a sort of oriental dream of splendour. I have
a vague recollection of thick carpets, and deep arm
chairs, and swift and silent service, and wonderful
food, and universal kindness. I remember leaning up
against the bar in one of the largest bar-rooms I have
ever seen (it would have restored Michael Finsbury s
confidence in the human race), and I remember beg
ging vainly to be allowed to pay for a drink just once,

A VISIT TO AMERICA 2OI

so as not to carry away with me the remorse of a hun-
dred-per-cent sponger. And I remember being shown
the very fine mural paintings of the celebrated Red
wood Grove, which were at the time nearing comple
tion. But all the rest is merged into an imperial haze
in which I seemed to be playing the part of Harun-al-
Rashid.

The picture-laden walls of the lordly bar point to
the number of distinguished artists who are members
of the Bohemian Club, and the annual dramatic pro
ductions in the Grove to the distinguished dramatists
and actors, and the brilliant conversation to the wits
and poets. But I could not help feeling that the word
"Bohemian" has travelled almost as far from the Vie
de Boheme, with its poverties, its garrets, its squalors,
its despairs, as the distance between the Golden Gate
and the Quartier Latin. Indeed I felt that probably I
was the only member (for such was I for a glorious,
unforgettable week) who was really qualified for
membership according to the definition of "Bohe-
mian" in the New English Dictionary: "An artist, lit
erary man, or actor, who leads a free, vagabond, or
irregular life, not being particular as to the society he
frequents, and despising conventionalities generally.
[Used with considerable latitude, with or without ref
erence to morals.]" Of course the clubmen might reply
that it was pretty clear that at least they were not par
ticular as to the society they frequented. But against
that, I was unquestionably the only member, perma
nent or temporary, who did not possess a hat.

202 A VISIT TO AMERICA

Having settled down into my Caliphal residence, I
started out to explore the city.

The first thing that strikes the stranger in San
Francisco is that it is built not upon fourteen hills but
upon about ten thousand ladders. I never saw such
streets. Wherever you turn, a street is either plunging
down into an abyss below you or climbing vertically
into the heavens above you. Occasionally you come to
a transverse street and then you get the impression
that you are standing on a shelf, half-way up the wall
of a gargantuan room or on one of those narrow
ledges in the Rocky Mountains, with a precipice on
one side and a sheer cliff on the other, on which the
young, curly-haired hero of our boyhood-tales invari
ably used to encounter a grizzly bear while flying from
a band of hostile Sioux. These straight-up-and-down
ladders are simply fantastical in their steepness.
The street-cars will not trust themselves to electricity
upon such giddy drops, but cling passionately to a
creaking cable. But even these streets are not the most
preposterous in the town, for there is one that is noth
ing more or less than a spiral staircase, broad enough
to take an automobile. You go whirling round and
round, with your car tilted to an angle of about
sixty degrees, your engine boiling, your ears sing
ing, and your head swimming. Coming down is even
worse, for you spin down like a crazy fly on a cork
screw, expecting every moment to fall off and lie at
the bottom with your legs kicking in the air.

I found it less dizzy, and less tiring to the ankles, to

A VISIT TO AMERICA 203

keep to the lower part of the city. Fisherman s Wharf,
for instance, is a pleasant spot to while away an hour.
The little fishing-boats, blue and green and yellow and
brown, lie at their moorings in the basin, and Italian
urchins howl imprecations at one another, and the gulls,
with proud hook-noses like early Roman Emperors,
stand on the tops of the warehouses, and the fattest,
sleekest, smuggest, blandest cats roll from one fish-stall
to another, disdaining anything lower in the piscine
hierarchy than a fresh lobster, and the stalls are cov
ered with strange-looking fish and sea-shells diapered
with all the colours of the celestial prism.

The Barbary Coast is a disappointment, for it is only
a memory. Its horrific days of fame and iniquity are
over, and its windows are broken and boarded up, and
its dwelling places are the haunt of the spider and the
cockroach. But Chinatown is still with us, and to
Chinatown in San Francisco, as to Harlem in New
York, I made my pilgrimage. It was an interesting
experience, but more interesting for its suggestion of
hidden mysteries, of an age-old life no European or
American will ever see 3 of a world that lives and loves
and works and plays behind a veil that is eternally im
penetrable, rather than what we actually saw. The
facade for the tourist is a hundred times more cleverly
disguised than the tawdry fagade at Harlem, and
everywhere there is a dignity and orderliness that
comes from ten thousand years of knowledge. But it
is only a facade. The life of Chinatown is not for
passing travellers. We were shown the Hall of the

204 A VISIT TO AMERICA

Four Families with its pictures and its tapestries and
carvings and metal-work and carpets, but after we
had seen and admired them all, we were no nearer to
an understanding of the Four Families and the benefi
cent power which they have wielded wherever Chi
nese are gathered together, ever since the four became
bound in friendship in the century that we call the
seventh B.C.

We stood in the middle of the Chinese theatre and
watched the gaily dressed actors intoning their parts,
and listened to the incessant clashing discords of the
orchestra which seem to be more important to the
action than anything which the players say or do, and
marvelled at the delicate, porcelain beauty of an ac
tress who was preparing to go on, and looked at the
hundreds and hundreds of boxes containing dresses
and "props"; and at the end I felt that I understood
just as much about the Chinese Theatre as I did about
the Chinese newspaper which I went to see being "put
to bed" later on in the evening.

I went to the Hall of the Six Companies and listened
to an exposition in perfect English of who the Compa
nies are and what they mean, and at the end I felt that
I had been listening to a ghost.

Chinatown in San Francisco is full of colour and
picturesqueness and beauty and glamour. But all that
we see is just a show staged with gentle decorum to
satisfy a lot of little children whose countries had
never been heard of when Confucius was teaching phi
losophy to an ancient nation. The Show is perfectly

A VISIT TO AMERICA 205

arranged. There is no hint of patronage to spoil the
self-esteem of the children. Meticulous care is taken
to see that no infantile feelings are hurt, and at the end
of the tour dolls and other toys, sticks of incense,
carved toy-temples, embroidery, bronze Buddhas, little
souvenirs of a happy evening, are distributed among
the tiny tots, at a purely nominal cost, by the grave
and courteous seniors. The children clutch their
treasures, thank their entertainers with a becoming dif
fidence, bob and curtsey, and scuffle off home. Their
entertainers put up the shutters, and snuff out the
lights, and vanish gravely into the darkness. They are
free at last, after a long evening, to go to Chinatown.

When I got back to the Bohemian Club that night,
I found a square cardboard box awaiting me. It was
of a size large enough to contain a wedding-cake of
grandiose construction, and it was corded and sealed
like a dispatch-box. Inside it were layers and layers
of paper, and, nestling snugly at the core of it all, was
my hat. Its single-handed odyssey was over at last,
and once again I was the best-hatted man in all
America.

I went down to Monterey, the old Pacific capital, to
see the house in which Robert Louis Stevenson lived
before he went to Samoa. We motored there on a day
of mingled loveliness and tension, and the unfair

206 A VISIT TO AMERICA

thing was that I had all the loveliness and none of the
tension, whereas my hosts were situated exactly the
other way round. For it was the day of the elections,
November 6th, and California was in a sad turmoil.
Utopia was just round the corner, it appeared, and
Utopia, as so often happens in this crazy world, inevi
tably meant ruin for all that is brightest and gayest.
The ancient regime of California, with all its wit, its
elegance, its culture, its careless charm, was hearing
the distant creak of the tumbrils and seeing the distant
surge of the red Phrygian caps. If the corner was
turned at the election and the party of Utopia proved
victorious, then all that ancient regime would be swept
away by the mob to the economic and financial lamp
post. No wonder that on that sixth of November there
was tension in the air. But the only effect that the
political crisis had upon me, the Bohemian, "the vaga
bond of irregular habits," was the ordinance that no
drinks should be sold before seven P.M. on the day of
the election. My hosts, preoccupied with the possibility
that the next twenty-four hours might see them en
gulfed in irremediable ruin, had forgotten all about
this dry ordinance, and when I produced, at 11.30
A.M., a bottle of good Scotch whisky from my over
coat pocket, my stock went up prodigiously, and with
one accord we dismissed Utopia from our minds for
the rest of the day.

That drive from San Francisco to Monterey was
unforgettable. For many miles our road lay along a
wooded ridge with the fertile Californian Valley below

A VISIT TO AMERICA 207

us on the left, cosy, rich, peaceful, and on our right the
Pacific, shimmering in an early morning haze of sun
light and vapour that made the blue of the ocean very
pale and delicate. We went on and on through the
woods, and the mounting sun set on fire the red bark
of the madrone trees and the grey squirrels danced in
the tops of the eucalyptus trees, and the air was so full
of the scents of the juniper and the myrtle that I could
shut my eyes and believe that I was in my native Scot
land, and that the eternal roll of the deep organ-note
was the Atlantic breaking upon the islands, and not
the Pacific upon the old Spanish coast.

It was with deep misgivings that I approached the
Redwood trees, for our route lay through one of the
Groves, because they are among the Wonders of the
World which have had their full share of Publicity.
Every Californian, all the world over, regards himself
or herself as an honorary full-time publicity agent for
the Redwoods, and is never backward with statistics,
comparisons, and fully adjectived descriptions. In con
sequence the rest of the world has rather got into the
habit of automatically connecting in its mind a train
of thought which runs something like this: "Here is
a Californian Climate, Redwoods, twenty-minutes
speech, opportunity for a nice sleep." And forty winks
are thereupon snatched.

But I need not have been afraid. There is no anti
climax. The Redwoods win. They are unbelievably
impressive, far, far more impressive than anything
I had expected. Even the most eloquent and imagi-

2C>8 A VISIT TO AMERICA

native Californian and I have met many who were
richly endowed with both eloquence and imagina
tion cannot adequately convey the sense of majesty
and mystery that surround these trees. The God of the
Redwood forests is not Pan, the dancing, pipe-playing,
goat-footed, Puck-nosed little Arcadian, frightening
wayfarers with his irresponsible shouts, but Dodonian
Zeus himself, Father of the Olympian Gods, the
Gatherer of Clouds, the High Thunderer, whose altar
stood among the great mountain trees of Epirus.

But I do not propose to join the Californian patriots
in their gallant attempt upon the impossible. The
theme is too stupendous.

Those selfsame trees, under which we stood that
morning, were a thousand years old when Cleopatra
was reigning in Egypt. They were strong young trees
when Helen was sailing across the ^Egean Sea to Troy,
and as seedlings they knew that unparalleled day,
never again to be repeated in all their long meteoro
logical experience, when "the sun stood still in the
midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a
whole day" in order to enable Joshua the more effec
tively to smite the Amorites.

We lunched on the way to Monterey in a restaurant
that deserves an honourable mention for its remarkable
interior. In fact I never saw anything like it in my
life. It was in the middle of a pine-wood, but no
clearing had been cut in the trees for it, Trees,

A VISIT TO AMERICA 209

rocks, shrubs, had all been left untouched, and the four
walls simply built round them. A small stream tinkled
pleasantly through the dining-room, with miniature
cataracts and pools, and flowers grew on its banks. The
tables were dotted about among the pines. In fact all
the amenities contributed by Nature to the restaurant
were charming. Man s efforts to imitate them with
Ye olde Rustick woodworke were not so good. Indeed
Man s idea of what God would have done with the
business of Creation, if only He had had the good for
tune to take a College degree in fretwork, is often a
little naive.

As we came near to Monterey the scent of the Ocean,
which had never been absent from the air for long
at a time all that day, even in the depths of the red
wood-groves, grew more and more pungent, and the
roll and boom of the surf muttered and rumbled in
front of us. Robert Louis spoke a true word when he
said that at Monterey the ocean is the all-pervading
presence. "A great faint sound of breakers follows you
high up into the inland canons, the roar of water
dwells in the clean, empty rooms of Monterey as in a
shell upon the chimney; go where you will you have
but to pause and listen to hear the voice of the Pacific."

All Americans who wring their hands at the new
ness of their country ought to be compelled to make
a pilgrimage to a number of old cities in the United
States, and one of them most certainly ought to be
the old Pacific capital. Monterey could teach them
several things. There are layers of civilization in Mon-

210 A VISIT TO AMERICA

tcrey. Modernity, of course, is represented in a large
hotel. But just round the corner there is the first house
that was ever built of brick in California, and not far
is the first theatre, a small, low, white house, gaily
decorated with geraniums and petunias. Its date is
interesting 1847, two years before the gold-rush. The
gold-miners did not bring all the licentiousness with
them. Stevenson s house is a simple, two-storeyed
building, whitewashed, with a pleasant ornamentation
along the top under the rain-gutter, and a tablet re
cording that R. L. S. lived there in 1879.

Earlier than any of these is the Custom House, which
dates from 1814, built of adobe and roofed with red
tiles during the last tottering years of the mainland
Empire of Spain. But the oldest of all is the long white
building which was the Headquarters of General Jose
Castro while he was "Military Commandant of the
Northern Department" many a score of years ago.
Here is the authentic link between Cortez and Per-
shing, a fragment of history, an echo of a romantic
past. And how do the Americans treat this national
monument? Is it a Museum? Has it been bought by
a millionaire and presented to the Nation ? Is it treas
ured by a people who spend so much time deploring
that they have so little to treasure? Not on your life.
Part of it is a printing-press and part of it is a saddle-
shop. At the back, the white adobe wall that sur
rounded the Spanish Bear-Pit is crumbling to dust.
Weeds and rubbish lie heavily upon it. All is in decay.
And no one cares. No one pays the slightest attention.

A VISIT TO AMERICA 211

The hundred-year-old house in which a Scottish
author lived for a month or two is preserved with zeal.
Naturally I do not complain about that. I wish I could
believe that the hotel in which I dined will be regarded
in 1980 with equal veneration. But where is the sense
in making such a fuss of Stevenson s temporary lodg
ing and yet allowing a few yards away, a priceless relic
of America s past to tumble into irretrievable ruin?
Is America so rich in mediaeval Spanish Bear-Pits
and remember that the Spaniards came to the neigh
bourhood of Monterey before 1550 that she can af
ford to throw one of them recklessly away ? If it comes
to that, are there many mediaeval Spanish Bear-Pits
anywhere in the world, including Spain itself? Unless
something is done, and done quickly, the adobe walls
will vanish, and the Bear-Pit will pass out of human
memory and, sooner or later, the Headquarters itself
of the Military Command of the Northern Department
will join its General in the eternity of oblivion.

I wandered round the Harbour and watched the
Italian fishermen mildly busying themselves on their
bright-coloured boats in the evening sunlight, visited
Carmel, where the artistic colony has succeeded, as
artistic colonies do wherever they settle, in making a
quiet place into a garish and self-conscious one, and
motored back to San Francisco after dinner. We went
back by a different route, across miles and miles of
mud-flats that were covered with sagebrush and water

212 A VISIT TO AMERICA

and mist. Interminable processions of iron pylons
marched beside us and across us and round us, be
striding the land in every direction. For a short while
the Macon, that unfortunate airship, hovered overhead
before it vanished into the gathering shadows.

Next day we learnt that California had decided not
to experiment with Utopia, and faces that on the day
before had been long and pale, were now round, rosy,
and beaming. The votes kept on coming in all day
from outlying parts of the State, but after the first ex
citement was over when it was incorrectly reported
that Universal Wealth and Happiness had carried San
Francisco by the length of a street it was obvious that
Universal Poverty and Misery (or whatever the ticket
was called) was a popular winner.

The results as they came in, were posted in shop-
windows, and I saw in one of them the saddest elec
tion result that I have ever seen. The votes in Pre
cinct 83 had just been counted and the two leading
protagonists had scored about four hundred and three
hundred respectively. Then came: "Sam Darcy
(Comm.), i vote. Milen Dempster (Soc.), i vote." I
longed, quite unreasonably, for the knowledge would
not have been of the slightest profit to me, to know
whether Mr. Darcy voted for himself, and Mr. Demp
ster for himself, or whether they decided that this
would be a piece of arrogance hardly in keeping with
the fine old traditions of the Left Wing in American

A VISIT TO AMERICA 213

politics, and therefore agreed to vote for each other.
But there was no one whom I could ask about the
difficult problem, for none of my friends seemed to
be either Communist or Socialist, and I hardly liked
to appear to my Republican friends as one taking even
an academic interest in the Left, and now I do not sup
pose that I shall ever know. It is a pity.

Day followed day, and still I lingered in San Fran
cisco. My famous Itinerary had been torn up, my
schedule had been thrown to the winds. Of all the
cities I have ever visited, San Francisco is the most
difficult to leave. Getting to it, thanks to that infernal
ferry system and absence of railroad stations, is hard
enough. Getting away is practically impossible.

There is a gaiety in the air that is irresistible. The
street-corners are piled high with flowers on open-air
stalls, and the women are more beautiful even than in
Salt Lake City and dressed with a more elegant "chic"
than anything which either Park Avenue or Macy s
can show, and there is an atmosphere, even on the
foggiest days, of sunshine. The truth, I suppose, is
that San Francisco is a metropolis. It is not a provin
cial city looking to the Atlantic Coast for its culture,
but a metropolis with its own traditions, its own an
cestors, its own heritage of Spain and of the Pioneers,
its own proud consciousness of history and culture.
That is why it has a carefree look about it. There is
no inferiority complex about San Francisco. And
there is no parochialism either. At a dinner table you
will hear English party politics discussed with a vast

214 A VISIT TO AMERICA

deal more understanding than you will ever hear
American party politics discussed in England. In the
reading-room of the Pacific Union Club you will find
a file not only of the London Times, but of at least
half a dozen British weekly papers as well, that you
might search for in vain in many New York clubs.

And, of course, there is that incredible, that ines
capable harbour. Day after day I requested my sixth
or seventh valet at the Bohemian Club to pack my
belongings and then went out for a last look at the
harbour, and day after day I came back a few hours
later and requested the sixth or seventh valet to unpack
again. I just wanted to see once more the sun setting
beyond the Golden Gate.

I used to sit for hours on the top of the hill near the
Presidio and watch the steamers plugging through the
fast-running currents of the Golden Gate, and the tall
ferry-boats, triple-decked like oarless galleys, gliding
across the harbour, like stately dames moving through
the paces of an antique dance, and the soldiers drilling
lazily below.

The whole fantasy of America is in that mighty pan
orama, the majesty and the absurdity, the vast impres-
siveness and the comic triviality,, the quality of eternity
and the quality of an urchin. Whoever doubts that
America is the land of Contrasts, so startling that you
do not know whether to laugh or to cry, or simply to
disbelieve your own eyes, should sit with me for an
hour above the Presidio. I would show him a thing
or two. Firstly, I would have brought him up to our

A VISIT TO AMERICA 215

post of observation past the oldest house in San Fran
cisco, the Commandant s house in the Presidio, built
in 17763 headquarters of Spanish, Mexican, and Ameri
can rule. It is an adobe house, and a National Monu
ment, and the San Franciscans have demonstrated with
clarity that they are not careless and neglectful, like
the Montereyans with their Bear-Pit. They are not
going to let weeds and rubbish clutter up their oldest
house. Not they. Instead, they have renovated it and
painted it and tinkered it, until it looks exactly the
same, and just as poisonously ugly, as any other of the
barrack-square houses of the garrison. Then I would
point down to the outline of the bay, and to the hide
ous piers of the new iron bridge which is going to
stride across that loveliest of scenes. I would show him
the three islands with their lovely Spanish names,
Angel and Yerba Buena and Alcatraz, and tell him
that Yerba Buena is often called Goat Island. I do not
know whether the Spanish words mean "Good Tem
per," or "White Hellebore," or "Lemon-Scented Aloy-
sia" for my dictionary is dubiously impartial on the
subject and gives all three but I do know that, which
ever they mean, the words make a more euphonious
sound than "Goat." An acquaintance of mine discov
ered, in the old files of a San Francisco newspaper, a
poem written in the form of an "Invocation to the
Spirit of the Harbor," and it contained this immortal
couplet:

Three islands on thy bosom float
Angel, Alcatraz, and Goat.

216 A VISIT TO AMERICA

But the American Demon of Incongruity does not stop
at renaming the magic island of the White Hellebore
(or Good Temper, or Lemon-Scented Aloysia) with
that ridiculous name. It has got a far better joke than
that up its sleeve. For Alcatraz, tiny jewel in a perfect
setting, is used as a Federal Penitentiary for some of
the most hideous scoundrels that ever lived. So, my
friend, as you sit beside me and gaze upon the en
chanted scene, if you try to conjure up in your roman
tic mind the Oceanides or Nymphs of Ocean, or
Hamadryads from the wooded slopes of Point Bonita,
or Naiads from the ripples of the Sacramento River,
you are much more likely to get a vision of a Sicilian
vice-racketeer, a shot-gun in one hand and a Thomp
son sub-machine gun in the other, who has commit
ted fifty atrocious murders and is serving, in conse
quence, a long sentence for having defrauded the
Revenue of its due share of his vice-profits. The sight
of that little haunt of horror went far towards spoiling
the bay for me. After some kind friend had explained
to me what it was as I am so kindly explaining to
you now I could not look at the view without my
eyes being irresistibly attracted towards Alcatraz, so
that in the end I almost persuaded myself that I could
see a foul miasma rising from it into the air, as if the
island really was a witch s cauldron in which unspeak
able things were being brewed. Then I would show you,
if your patience was not yet exhausted, the glorious site
which is occupied by the barracks and drill-ground,
and the azalea blossoms beside concrete gun-emplace-

A VISIT TO AMERICA 217

merits, and the shell-magazines among the eucalyptus
trees, and the sentries strolling about among the
palms, ready to give instant warning, presumably in
the event of a surprise landing of Japanese cavalry
upon the Seal Rocks. And then I would take you home
past the last surviving building of the Fair of 1915, a
sad stucco palace, the colour of ripened wheat, stand
ing forlornly on the edge of an artificial lake. It looks
as if it had been designed by a decorator of wedding-
cakes who had once, years ago, seen a picture postcard
of a Greek Temple and had tried to reproduce it from
memory. The melancholy of the scene was deepened
by a solitary gondola, which had once been white but
was now a mottled grey, lying on its side upon a mud-
bank in the lake. Greco-stucco splendour had faded,
and the Carnaval de Venise was a ghost.

But the crowning joke is that San Francisco is going
to restore the whole thing, temple, lake, gondola, and
all, to its former magnificence.

But I tore myself away at last from the Siren City,
from its parks, its museums, its Aquarium, its Exhi
bition of stuffed birds (in the city of St. Francis), its
boulevards, its lovely and merry-minded citizens, and
from the sunsets, the shadows lengthening across the
Pacific, and the murmur of the breakers upon the
shore.

CHAPTER TWELVE

"Why this is indeed a show it has called the dead out of the earth!"

WALT WHITMAN.

I NOW come to the most painful experience or rather
series of experiences of my entire visit to the United
States of America. Looking back on it from a distance
of time and thank Heaven of space also, I can still
feel the horror of the nightmare. The hot breath of
the Apocalyptic Horsemen is on my neck, and I still
wake up on occasions in peaceful England, cold with
terror from the dream that I am once again upon the
road to Los Angeles.

This is what happened. A young American friend
of mine offered to drive me down from San Francisco
to Los Angeles in his automobile. I accepted poor
silly creature with grateful alacrity. The alternatives
were the train, with which I was getting bored, and
the aeroplane, of which I have always been afraid; and
so the prospect of a pleasant couple of days, dawdling
down the Pacific Coast, was alluring. Even when we
were breakfasting together in San Francisco, at seven
A.M. on the day of our start, my young friend and I,
an obvious hint of what was ahead of me was dropped,
but I, still wrapped in a fool s Paradise and a Euro-

218

A VISIT TO AMERICA 219

pean s idea of motor-travelling, hardly noticed it, let
alone treated it seriously.

"We ll be there in time for dinner/ remarked my
friend (whom for simplicity s sake I will henceforth
call Louis). Knowing the distance to be about 480
miles, I ignored such a flippant excursion into the
spheres of unreality, and continued my breakfast. Even
when Louis added casually that he regularly did the
trip in less than twelve hours, I did not awake to the
seriousness of the situation.

We started off at about 7.30 A.M. and bowled out on
to the splendid road to San Jose. At first the pace was
the ordinary moderate speed to which I had become
accustomed in America. That is to say, we seldom
dropped below sixty and never rose above seventy. It
was a glorious morning. The sun was shining, the
sky was blue, the air was crisp, and although I was
sad at leaving San Francisco, there was at least the
small measure of consolation that is afforded by the
perennial thrill of being on the road again, and head
ing for new country. I lay back in my seat, stretched
my legs out, carolled a stave or two and gazed vacu
ously at the heavens or at the landscape.

But after San Jose I began to feel a perceptible
change. The wind was blowing a little harder, the
note of the horn was a little more shrill, and the rest
of the traffic seemed to be moving a little more slowly
when it was going in the same direction as ourselves
and a little more quickly when it was coming towards
us. At first I was a little drowsy and did not apprc-

220 A VISIT TO AMERICA

ciate the significance of these small changes. But when,
in the middle of a yawn, I glanced at the speedometer
and saw that we were moving at about ninety miles per
hour I sat up abruptly. From that moment I had no
more peace. Louis s jaw was stuck out, his eyes were
flashing, and he crouched over his wheel like a dark
demon. It was a terrifying experience. Louis did not
let up for an instant. If ever he felt that he was losing
his dash he would switch on the radio and the thunder
of "Tannhauser" or the blood-exciting music of "Car
men" would spur him to still more dreadful excesses
of locomotion. The landscape whizzed past us, and
out of many scores of miles between San Jose and San
Luis Obispo I have no recollection of anything except
the wide, tree-filled stony bed of the Salinas River.

If we crossed that river once, we must have crossed
it a dozen times, backwards and forwards, from east
to west and from west to east, and, for all I know, from
northeast by east to southwest by west and back again.
We crossed it on long steel bridges and on massive
concrete bridges, on suspension bridges and on sextuple
spans, on viaducts and cantilevers, on cast-iron,
wrought-iron, tubular, lattice-girder, and quadrangu
lar-girder bridges, in short on every variety of bridge
known to man except the Peruvian rope-bridge of the
style of San Luis Key. And the extraordinary thing
was that not once did I see a drop of water in the Sa
linas River. However, I was not surprised. I was long
past surprise by this time, or indeed any emotion what
soever except terror. I cannot even remember where

A VISIT TO AMERICA 221

we stopped for lunch. All I know is that Louis said
we could easily lunch in seventeen minutes, and that
the restaurant sold no form of stimulant stronger than
coffee.

A welcome halt was at the old Spanish Mission-
house of San Miguel Arcangel, a late eighteenth cen
tury building, adobe with red tiles, standing on the
highway that is called El Camino del Key to this day.
We pulled the clapper-rope of an old greenish silvery
bell that stood outside the door, and a Franciscan came
out and showed us round. There was a small museum
with a number of relics of the old Hispano-Indian
days, cooking utensils, metal-work, and so on, but by
far the most interesting things were the frescoes on
the wall of the Chapel. They were painted by Indians
with Indian materials, but presumably under the gen
eral directions of the Franciscans. For instance the
Madonna is Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe, but the face
is a face of an Indian woman, and the abstract decora
tions, in faded blues and greens and pinks, never came
from the brush of a countryman of Velazquez. The
bell which we rang was made of silver from the mines
of Peru and was one of a chain of mission-bells on the
Highway of the King from San Francisco Solano in the
north to San Pedro y San Pablo on the Mexican border.

I tried to linger among the almond trees in the Mis
sion garden, but the demon driver was impatient to be
on his way again. We had wasted nearly twenty minutes
as it was.

There are one or two curious features about motor-

222 A VISIT TO AMERICA

driving in the United States, and, during this maniacal
rush down the Pacific Coast, I had an occasional op
portunity, in the brief intervals between prayers, oaths,
gasps, thank-offerings for unbelievable escapes, and
vows of future libations to St. Christopher, of consid
ering them. For instance, there is far less ill-temper
upon American roads than upon European. Heaven
knows there is far more cause for ill-temper in
America, for the things which drivers do to one another
would lead to a widespread epidemic of assassination
if they were done in Europe. The only rule seemed
to be that the automobile with its nose in front even
2 it is only an eighth of an inch goes ahead and the
rest put their brakes on. A car coming out of a farm-
lane on to a giant highroad with six rows of racing
automobiles flashing past, has only to push out in front
of a triple string and the whole traffic has to pull up
for it. So long as it is in front, that seems to be good
enough. The triple string jams on its brakes, waltzes all
over the road, turns somersaults, whizzes round in cir
cles, and nobody seems to mind. There is very little
swearing and hardly any horn-blowing. If you did a
thing like that in England you would hear some sur
prising things about yourself, the air would be shat
tered with infuriated screeches from electric horns, and
probably a retired lieutenant-colonel would bounce up
from somewhere and take your name and address to
prosecute you for dangerous driving. If you did it in
France the leading trio of the triple string would hit you
fore, aft, and amidships, and the remainder of the main-

A VISIT TO AMERICA 223

road traffic would race unconcernedly over the debris.
In Germany you would, of course, spend most o the
rest of your life in a Nazi dungeon. But in America
nothing happens at all. The main stream pulls up. You
amble across. The main stream goes on again. Another
peculiar feature about the road-traffic is the Speed-
Cop. His duty in life is to cruise about the roads
whithersoever the spirit moves him in order to check
the monstrous speed-excesses of people like Louis. And
he has my warmest good-will in his task. For this pur
pose he is mounted upon a high-powered motorcycle.
Now America is a land of fast cheap motor-cars and,
in consequence, motorcycles are very uncommon.
When it is possible to buy a very fine car for a handful
of dollars, no one is going to ride upon a motorcycle
unless it is given away with a drink of Coca Cola or
enclosed in a packet of chewing-gum. When, there
fore, the speed-lunatics see a motorcycle in the far dis
tance, they are safe to assume that the odds are about
fifteen to one that it is bestridden by a Speed-Cop, and
accordingly they slacken speed from ninety miles an
hour to a demure seventy. There is a further protec
tion for the law-breaker. The Speed-Cop s machine is
painted white and it is thereby the more clearly dis
tinguishable at a distance. In fact the only real danger
of being seized by the Law is when you come suddenly
on one of its representatives round a corner. But that
happens seldom. All too seldom.

Motoring in America provides one of the very few
examples of an American word or expression being

224 A VISIT TO AMERICA

shorter than the corresponding English one. Mr. G.
K. Chesterton has pointed out in an immortal poem
how the American hustler has to say "elevator"
because he hasn t time to say "lift," and "apartment"
for "flat," and so on. And in motoring, at first the
American ran true to form by saying "gasoline" in
stead of "petrol." But then some genius came along,
almost certainly an Englishman, who pointed out that
"gasoline" could be shortened to "gas," and after a
few years of careful deliberation and methodical study
of the proposition, the American nation agreed that
in all probability, without prejudice, and subject to the
final decision of the Supreme Court, the word "gas"
might be conceded to be a shorter word than "gaso
line," and so it was adopted throughout the land with
extreme reluctance and misgiving.

As we hurled ourselves southwards, I could see, in
the momentary gaps between the towns, that the veg
etation was becoming more and more tropical. Palms
were taller and cactus more hideous. Poinsettias were
splashing the countryside with their gorgeous flames,
and for the first time I saw the graceful leaves and
crimson berries of the pepper-tree. Lemon-groves and
bougainvillaea and blue plumbago and yellow-flow
ered acacias did their gaily coloured best to distract me
from the demon-driver and his hazards, and here and
there clusters of oil-derricks ruined the view of the
Pacific. The small towns of California are just as ugly
as the small towns in any part of the Middle West,
and consist, so far as one can see, solely of Gasoline-

A VISIT TO AMERICA 225

Pumps and Advertisements. Occasionally a two-
storeyed wooden house peeps coyly over the top of a
mammoth billboard, but as a general rule it is practi
cally impossible to detect the lairs to which the popu
lace creeps after its long day spent in contemplation
of pictorial vulgarity. Oddly enough, the American
advertiser makes very little use of Sex-Appeal in his
assaults upon the Public Fancy. It is very rare to see
pictures of bathing nymphs, or long silk legs, or classi
cal studies of Aphrodite, or deep-bosomed Junos, or
the Rape of the Sabine Women, or ladies clad only in
suspender-belts, or Cleopatra s sultry languor upon a
divan, such as are the delight of his English colleague.
In America an automobile, let us say a Spoffin Super-
Six, is usually advertised by a huge announcement
which simply says "Spoffin Super-Six is the Best," or
else by a picture of the car itself, whereas in England
its merits will be conveyed to the world by a girl in
shorts and a brassiere, and with unbelievably long
legs, gazing out across the Bay of Naples.

The American small town, in effect, is a mass of
slogans on boards and practically nothing else.

And when you come to think of it, this plastering
of the rural hamlets with exhortations to purchase this
or that is a very poor example of the business acumen
of the American. For if the hamlet is as completely
deserted as it appears to be, it is obvious that local cus
tom will be non-existent. While if the slogans are
designed to attract the eye of the passing motorist,
again the labour is in vain. For the passing motorist

226 A VISIT TO AMERICA

passes so very quickly that he sees nothing but a
smudge of blaring colour, and in a moment more he
is out into the countryside without the faintest recol
lection of what he has been implored to purchase. Of
course there are the hitch-hikers who have plenty of
leisure to study the slogans as they amble past, but so
far as I could judge from their appearances, these gen
tlemen seemed unlikely to be in a position to buy
goods in any considerable quantity.

Hour after hour we rushed southwards, and any
faint hope that I may have cherished that Louis might
relax the giddy speed as he grew tired, steadily waned.
If anything he drove faster and faster as it began to
dawn upon him that he had a very good chance of
beating his previous record for the course. And then,
just as I had given up all thought of ever seeing my
native country again, hope flared up. For a sign
post, of which I was able to catch a glimpse as Louis
slowed down for an instant to seventy miles an hour
so as not to assassinate an elderly pedestrian, told me
that we were approaching the City of the Patron Saint
and Protectress of all artillerymen, and I knew that I,
an old gunner of the World War, was in the safe keep
ing of the Blessed Barbara. The sun came out as we
ran merrily into the bright broad streets of the town,
and the cheerful colours of the Spanish houses com
peted with the flowers and the flags and the streamers
to give us a triumphal entry. There was high festival
that day in Santa Barbara for some reason or other, and
I was determined to join in, if only for half an hour,

A VISIT TO AMERICA 227

to get a rest from the demon-driver. Threatening,
therefore, to brain Louis with a spanner if he did not
halt, I compelled him to drive to an Olde Englyshe
Tudor Hostelrie, complete with beer-mugs, bogus tim
bers, pictures of hunting scenes with the Belvoir and
the Quorn, portraits of Mr. Pickwick, and cosy little
inglenooks, where I spent one of the brightest half-
hours of my life, restoring my shattered nerves, pour
ing libations to Santa Barbara, fortifying myself against
the last lap in the journey, and resolutely preventing
Louis from touching anything stronger than the bev
erage which in America is called, for some reason, beer.
So mellow, indeed, did I become and so forgiving,
that I solemnly withdrew my prayer to the Lady of
Cannons that Louis should be served as her father
Dioscorus had been served in 240 A.D. (or it may have
been 306 A.D. pedants haggle about it to this day),
and allotted a whole lightning bolt to himself.

The sun was setting over the Pacific, and occasion
ally a ray of golden light peeped through the oil-der
ricks, as we swung down the last hundred miles into
Los Angeles. Louis drove as fast as ever, but I sat hap
pily in my corner, singing loudly the song about the
artillery at the Battle of the Marne and how

her legend witnesseth
Barbara, the saint of gunners, and a stay in sudden death,

and at nightfall we reached the City of the Angels.

228 A VISIT TO AMERICA

Los Angeles is a weird place. I had been warned
many times by American friends that I must expect to
find a mushroom-town filled to overflowing with ex
quisitely beautiful young ladies. My first impression
was that Los Angeles is a toadstool town filled to over
flowing with centenarians. I pottered about the streets
in goggling amazement that any place could be so
ugly and at the same time contain so many ugly peo
ple. Old, old ladies in black billowing skirts and
woollen stockings, high boots and ancient hats, clutch
ing in one hand a small carpet-bag and in the other
an eighteenth century umbrella, eddied to and fro
aimlessly. Old, old gentlemen in suits that must have
been dilapidated when Czolgosz shot President Mc-
Kinley, peered vacantly into shop-windows. The whole
population of the town seemed to have completed one
century and to have nothing whatever in the world to
do except to wait for the completion of a second. I
discovered afterwards, of course, that these are the
Middle Westerners who have come to Los Angeles to
die and find that it is a good deal harder than they
expected.

Being citizens of not especially vivid imaginations,
they can think of no better occupation than strolling
about the streets, thereby giving Los Angeles a world
wide reputation for dowdiness and longevity. The
exquisitely beautiful young ladies, on the other hand,
do not obtrude themselves on the casual visitor until,
he realizes that they are all working in shops, cafes,
restaurants, hotels, and so on, holding temporary occupa-

A VISIT TO AMERICA 229

tions until such time as they can catch the eye of a Film
Director and leap in one bound to Stardom. They are
all lovely, and most of them look as if they would
steal the blankets off the deathbed of a blind grand-
aunt. Many of the accused men and women in the
Chicago Police Court looked like innocent little lamb
kins in comparison with these hard-eyed beauties of
Los Angeles.

The toadstool itself is astonishing. Bits of fungoid
growth shoot up out of the earth hither and thither.
Sometimes it may take the form of a few skyscrapers,
sometimes of a garbage-dump, sometimes of a residen
tial quarter, and sometimes of a board announcing that
a superlatively big, or luxurious, or beautiful, or all
three, building is likely to be put up on that site in
the near future, and sometimes of the inevitable mound
of rusty cans. The streets are vast and imposing, and
often run for miles through the city with nothing on
either side except green fields. I should think there is
more opportunity for nature-study within the city
boundaries of Los Angeles than in any other urban dis
trict in the world, and the rabbit shooting must be
superb. Indeed, the aged lowans and Nebraskans must
often be reminded of their native prairies when pass
ing down some of the streets of the city of their adop
tion.

The automobiles of Los Angeles provide plenty of
amusement for the stranger. There are a great many
of them more, I believe, per head of population than
in any other town in the world and most of them

230 A VISIT TO AMERICA

must have been clanking down the country lanes round
the tiny villages of Hollywood and Glendale and Bur-
bank many a long year before the cinematograph in
dustry came to California. The oldest automobiles in
the world must be in Los Angeles, coeval, many of
them, with the Middle Western veterans. Of course
there is a sprinkling of modern automobiles, and here
and there a lordly Rolls-Royce glides past with its
Film-Star or its bediamonded magnate. But in the
main they belong to one or other of those famous cate
gories, the sort that cost fifty dollars ten years ago and
the sort that cost ten dollars fifty years ago.

But it is not easy to see much of Los Angeles. Hos
pitality is so boundlessly lavish, and kindness to visitors
so warm and generous, that there is little time for
sight-seeing. My chief recollections are a cocktail party
in Hollywood of film-actors and actresses, scenarists,
playwrights, dialogue writers, and directors, all of
whom were British; two days of fog which gave me
even more pleasure than the fog at the Berkeley
Country Club at San Francisco; the old-world splen
dour of the porters at the Biltmore Hotel who are
dressed as English hunting squires in top-hats, black
coats, white breeches, and long boots with orange tops;
a visit to the Mexican quarter in the older part of the
town; and being compelled to celebrate Armistice Day
with a glass of absinthe at ten o clock in the morning.

By this time my constitution was having an increas
ingly difficult struggle with American hospitality, and
it was a very jaded traveller who crept surreptitiously
out of Los Angeles and escaped in the night to Arizona.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

"Down in Texas the cotton-field, the negro-cabins, drivers driving mules
or oxen before rude carts, cotton-bales piled on banks and wharves" (!)

WALT WHITMAN.

(My exclamation mark.)

THAT night I lay on my green-curtained shelf in
the Pullman-Car of the Golden State Express what
lovely names they give their big expresses in America!
Golden State, Sunset Limited, Black Hawk, Olym
pian, Flying Texan, Sunshine Special, Texas Ranger,
Louisiana Limited, Tomahawk, Copper Country,
Dixie Flyer, Flamingo, and many another. I only
came across three which puzzled me in this demo
cratic country, and oddly enough, all three were on the
same railroad system, the Aristocrat, the Empire
Builder, and the American Royal, and only one which
was completely out of the tradition of high, sonorous,
nomenclature, and that was the Ak-Sar-Ben, which is
Nebraska spelt backwards. To resume: that night I
lay awake and considered my position with the aid of
a map and a thermometer. Taking the map first, I
looked at the handful of places I had visited during the
course of several months, and the vast area which I
had not visited, and the appalling size of the place be
came more hideously apparent than ever. All the
southern States a civilization and culture entirely sep
arate from the rest still remained. The Spanish-

231

232 A VISIT TO AMERICA

French- American uniqueness of New Orleans; the
famous city of Charleston; Atlanta, home-town of one
of the three greatest golfers the world has ever seen;
the Shenandoah Valley and the Valley Pike up which
Jackson marched so swiftly and secretly; the battle
fields of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville; Savan
nah, where Captain Flint, the boozy old sea-man with
the blue mug, died of rum; Virginia, the most famous
State of all, and the tropical Everglades of Florida all
these were still unvisited and yet they were just part
of what I had not seen. Up in the north there were
the Appalachians, and the coast of Maine, and Moby
Dick s Nantucket, and Yale and Harvard, and at this
point I flung the map away and turned to temperature
and pulse. The conclusions were obvious, but I ac
cepted them with reluctance. Firstly, there was what
might be called the short-term policy. It consisted of
sticking to my Pullman-Car for as long as possible.
Only in a Pullman is the European traveller safe from
parties. If he once gets out of his haven and stops, if
only for a day, in a town which he has never heard of
before and of which he is positive that he does not
know a single citizen, he is lost. However short he
intends to make his visit, however obscure the town
may be, so long as it is on the route which his friends
know he is going to be taking, then he is doomed.
Someone will be on the look-out for him. Some kind
host from further back on his voyage will have passed
the word to someone in the town to "look out for Mr.
So-and-so and be kind to him"; and if Mr. So-and-so

A VISIT TO AMERICA 233

puts foot outside the station for so much as an hour
he will be nabbed, hustled into an automobile, and
within ten minutes he will be listening to the clink of
ice in a strong rye-highball that a total but charming
stranger will have bought for him.

My only chance, therefore, of avoiding immediate
catastrophe was to stick close to my Pullman and go
wherever it went, until I felt strong enough to face the
world of hosts again.

The second, or Long-Term, policy was arrived at
still more reluctantly, for it involved the abandonment
of the southern States entirely, with the exception of a
long-promised visit to Kentucky. It also meant giving
up an excursion which I had planned into Oklahoma,
Arkansas, and the Ozark Mountains, and also the
coast of Maine. But the map and the thermometer
convinced me that I must give up something if I was
ever to see the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond
again, and it was clearly better to put aside the whole
of the South for another time, than to rush into it and
to rush out again in such a hurry that I would miss
everything and yet spoil a second visit by skimming
off the cream of first impressions.

I woke up next day in Arizona, and all that day we
pounded along a single line of railroad-track down the
middle of a wide valley. The scene upon each side of
us was identical. Tall, dark yellow grass alternated
with patches of sand, the eternal sagebrush how tired

234 A VISIT TO AMERICA

I was getting of sagebrush! alternated with high
scrub, and Nature played a dry, hard tune upon the
four notes for hours on end. In the distance lay range
after range of mountains, their lower slopes blackish
green with dense masses of evergreen trees, their sum
mits barren and blue, almost as bright as the mineral
blues of the Montana mountains. To me it all looked
as useless as the deserts of Utah or Nebraska, but pre
sumably in somebody s eyes it must have found favour,
for an interminable wire fence ran on each side of
the track. But what the fences were for, whether to
prevent non-existent cattle or sheep from straying on
to the line, or to dissuade railroad officials from pick
ing bunches of cactus, that stood up everywhere in gro
tesque shapes, for their sweethearts, I never discovered.
To the casual passer-by they certainly appeared to be
the most ridiculous fences, built to prevent nothing
from straying out of one half of nowhere into the
other. But perhaps they meant something to someone.
There were few passengers on that train. I had read
all the magazines in the Club-Car at least six times, I
had finished all my own books except the Old Testa
mentand the atmosphere of Los Angeles was still
clinging to me sufficiently strongly to put me out of
tune with the high moral fervour of Isaiah; looking
back on it now, it seems to me that I might have
drawn a parallel with my own situation from the story
of Lot and so I sat in the Observation Car and gazed
sleepily sometimes at the mountains and sometimes at
the twin ribbons of steel that uncoiled themselves so

A VISIT TO AMERICA 235

endlessly beneath me, and reflected upon American
railroad travel, its comforts and its discomforts. The
traveller from Europe, of course, concentrates upon
the sleeping arrangements in the Pullman-cars when
he wants to shoot off a witticism or horrify a circle of
maiden-aunts whose only experience of railway loco
motion is the annual journey in a "Ladies Only" com
partment from London to the seaside, a journey lasting
about an hour and a half. The idea of men and
women, my dear, all higgledy-piggledy, my dear, and
a buck-nigger in charge and so on.

For some reason this part of American travel never
worried me at all. It is true that dressing and undress
ing is a little awkward, but then I never expect an
hotel-suite when I board a train in any country. If
you want the same luxury as in a British first-class
sleeper to Scotland, or in a sleeper of the International
Sleeping-Car Company on the Continent of Europe,
you can get it in America by paying extra and having
a room to yourself. The great mistake is to compare
the American Pullman with the European first-class
sleeper, instead of with the European night journey
spent in a second-class carriage, sitting up all the way,
with three travellers on each side. And it is just as
well to remember that a berth in an American Pull
man for the night costs less than double the compul
sory "tip" which you have to give to the conductor
on the wagon-Lits for service which he does sulkily
and badly, and for which the Company ought to pay
him.

236 A VISIT TO AMERICA

No, there is a good deal to be said for the Pullman
and its slow, courteous, usually venerable African who
polishes your shoes, brushes your clothes, and hides
your hat in a brown-paper bag. The beds are com
fortable, the sheets spotlessly clean, there is always iced
water on tap, and the air-conditioning system keeps
them at the right temperature and almost entirely free
from dust and grime.

Then again the American long-distance train is a
sort of travelling hotel with its Club-Car, its barber
shop, its bath, its cocktail-bar, sometimes, its Observa
tion Car, and, for those that want it, its Soda-Fountain.
There is usually something to do to pass the time be
tween meals. On the other hand those meals, as a
general rule, are unappetizing and very expensive. In
fact, if I were ranking the various branches of Ameri
can cooking which I met during my visit, I would put
at the top of the ladder, many rungs above any other,
cooking in private homes in Kentucky. Second in the
ranking list would be cooking in restaurants in Ken
tucky, and then, through numerous subtle gradations,
we would work down to the last but one, restaurant
cooking in New York (outside of Scribe s Club in East
Forty-third Street, and Andre s Restaurant in Frank
fort Street), and so to the bottom of the class, Dining-
Car cooking on any railroad system.

Drinks, also, when they are obtainable, are very ex
pensive, but as the rules which govern their sale vary
with wild capriciousness from one State to another,
often the traveller is so pleased and surprised at find-

A VISIT TO AMERICA 237

ing that they are obtainable at all that he pays with
little demur the exorbitant price demanded. The Vol
stead amendment led to some pretty confusion, but
the repeal of the Volstead amendment seems to be
almost worse. As your transcontinental express runs
from State to State, there is an incessant locking and
unlocking of the bar in accordance with the local laws,
and travellers who have kept a tolerable thirst in check
for an hour or two may find that they have in the
meantime crossed a fatal border, and that their virtuous
self-restraint has gone for less than no reward.

On the credit side of the American railroads must
be put the affable, even chatty, politeness of the ticket
inspectors, most of whom are dressed in the uniform of
an admiral of the fleet, while on the debit side goes the
universal absence of a tooth-glass in the washrooms. And
finally the beautiful smoothness of the trains on the
metals is more than discounted by the fearful jerks
and bangs of the stoppings and startings. Whether the
engines are not strong enough for the loads they have
to pull, or whether the drivers are as inexpert as they
seem, a night journey, upon however comfortable a
bed, may be made hideous by these jerks at every
stopping-place.

After these reflections, I returned to a cow-like in
spection of the Arizona scene. We had passed Tucson
almost the only loophole which America has left
us through which to reply to their quips about Mar-
joribanks and Cholmondeley and there was a little
more life in the landscape. Sometimes the dull yellow-

238 A VISIT TO AMERICA

brown was enlivened with a splash of genuine green,
pale spring-like green, and that always meant water,
and water always meant a house and, somewhere or
other in that wildness, a wandering cow or two. Once
or twice, even, there was a solitary horseman, in blue
shirt, ten-gallon hat, and furry trousers, languidly
rounding up a few lethargic beasts towards a cattle-
pen. The soil grew pink. Palms began to dot the
scrub. Short-grass ranges succeeded the long-grass
wastes, and on the skyline a row of cactus looked like
the trees along a route national in France after a mod
ern battle has passed that way. The sun sank in kalei
doscopic magnificence over the Arizona mountains,
and after dark we entered El Paso, the first town over
the Texas border.

As I had an hour to spare I hauled my greatcoat up
round my ears, pulled my hat down over my eyes, and
went for a stealthy walk. I had a letter of introduction
in El Paso and I was taking no chances. However,
nothing happened, and I caught, unmolested by would-
be hosts with their customary battery of high-balls and
old-fashioneds, the night train to Fort Worth.

The less said about that journey across Texas the
better. In the first place the sleeping-berths on the
Texas and Pacific railroad, after all the kind things I
had been thinking about American sleeping-berths in
general during the run across Arizona, turned out to
be several inches shorter than any I had previously
met, and I could not stretch out at full length. Then
the engine drivers seemed to be jerkier and joltier than

A VISIT TO AMERICA 239

ever, and I lay awake for hours wondering if another
of my Wild- West illusions was going to be shattered
and if Texas was going to turn out to be a land not
of the broad-shouldered giants of my youth, but of
little undersized chaps upon whose lack of inches the
Texas and Pacific could effect an economy in railroad
material. I was also struck from time to time during
these dismal watches of the night by the unmistakable
smell of oil, which I could not account for.

After a miserable night and an indifferent break
fast, I went to the Observation-Car to examine the
Texas of Romance, the Texas of the Rangers, of the
cattle-trails, of incredible feats with pistol and lasso,
of skirmishes with Indians and wild pursuits of Mexi
cans, of all, in fact, that made life for a child in a
London suburb worth living.

But what I saw was a Texas of a thousand oil-der
ricks, sticking uglily above the horizon, a Texas of
pipe-lines running under glorious autumnal leaves, of
heavy, oily palls of smoke lowering blackly on to the
ranges, of railroad sidings cutting their ways in all
directions, crossing and crisscrossing, and twisting and
turning, a Texas of square oil-tanks waiting to be filled,
of acres of derelict machinery, of huge wheels and
shafts and pinions sprawling rustily in golden bushes,
of litter and cans and garbage and dirt.

And the climax of the disillusion came when we
reached the town of Ranger. Think of it! A town
called Ranger in the State of the Texas Rangers. There
was Romance for you. But no. Ranger was the most

240 A VISIT TO AMERICA

squalid of the lot. It was as if several townlets of the
oil country had been picked up, rusty cans, old der
ricks, smashed automobiles and all, and piled into one
enormous dump and labelled Ranger. Even worse than
the vast heaps of old iron was the garden suburb, con
sisting of rows and rows of little wooden houses, each
exactly like its neighbours and all of them unoccu
pied. Nettles sprouted through the windows and sap
lings grew in the streets. In front of it, facing the
railroad, stood a large board on which were painted
the words, "Obey Acts 2-38." I could only assume that
those who had built the garden suburb and lived in it,
had at least obeyed part of that verse of the Acts of
the Apostles, for they certainly had repented.

It was a blessed relief to get out of the oil-country
at last into Texas of glorious woods and hillsides that
were glowing with orange and crimson. But the
damage had been done, and I shall never think happily
of Texas again.

Fort Worth and Dallas are an odd pair of neigh
bours, stuck down side by side on the plains. Fort
Worth is old I walked out to the stone which marks
the site of the original Camp Worth of 1839 Dallas
is new. Fort Worth faces west and dreams of the
great old days of the past when cattle were the world.
Dallas faces east and, very far from dreaming, concen
trates eagerly on the great new days of the future
when oil and insurance and banking will be the world,

A VISIT TO AMERICA 241

and when a century of progress will have made
America safe for the middleman and the broker. The
streets of Fort Worth are gay with blue shirts and
Stetson hats. In Dallas they are sombre with black
coats and derby hats. In short, Fort Worth, for all its
120,000 inhabitants, is a village, and Dallas is a cosmo
politan city, and between the two they provide yet
another illustration of the unbelievable complexity of
the American scene. The more the traveller sees of
this continent for the United States is a continent; it
is a cardinal mistake to compare it to this European
country or that; it should always be compared to Eu
rope itself the less he succeeds in understanding it.
But there is this consolation. The more he sees of it,
the more he ought to understand why he cannot un
derstand it. And after all, if you can see the obstacles
in your path, you are halfway to surmounting them.

Take these two towns, Fort Worth and Dallas, and
consider how many side-lights upon the social history
of America they can throw. They are not very large,
they are not very famous, and they are situated in the
corner of a State that is a good deal larger than the
whole of France. Nevertheless they are a beautiful
cross-section of the country. The fort is a memory of
the Pioneers, the cattle are symbolical of the first great
industry of the Southwest. The larger residential
houses, hidden in the trees on Lakeside in Dallas, are
symbolical of modern prosperity based on modern busi
ness, and the skyscrapers, clustered together in bold,
if forlorn, imitation of Manhattan, are an example of

242 A VISIT TO AMERICA

the herd-instinct run riot. Manhattan is a small island
and so the buildings must climb. Texas is bigger than
France and yet the buildings must climb. There is no
sense in it, but it is done; and Dallas is much prouder
of its lack of sense than it would be if it had planned
a beautiful city as Brigham Young s astronomer
planned Salt Lake City. The Heraldic Coat of Arms
of the United States ought to be a golden skyscraper,
alone, on an illimitable field of corn, with the motto,
"Well, if Manhattan can do it, why shouldn t we?"
It would explain much. Behind the skyscrapers in
Dallas there is a quarter of tumble-down, ramshackle
wooden houses called Little Mexico. It is full of junk-
shops, and small battered warehouses. One cafe ad
vertises itself as a "tortilla factory," another, the Pal
ace Cafe, as a "pick-me-up factory." In the children s
school at Dallas and do not forget that Dallas is a
Provincial town remote from the eastern and western
seaports there are children of twenty-nine nationali
ties.

In Fort Worth, overgrown village of spurred and
Stetsoned cow-punchers, the bookshop window con
tained the following books only about a dozen copies
of each Louisa Alcott s "Little Women," "Hans Brin-
ker, or The Silver Skates," "Tom Sawyer," one of the
romances of Jules Verne, and "The Swiss Family
Robinson." Dallas, city of hard-faced business men,
supports four flourishing amateur dramatic societies.
The largest of them has a membership of over three
thousand, each paying five dollars, and it produces six

A VISIT TO AMERICA 243

or seven plays each season, drawing a crowded house
for a week with each piece. I saw a list of the plays
which this society had performed during the last few
years. It might have been the list of the Manchester
or Birmingham repertory companies, which are the
most famous of the English professional repertory
companies. There is nothing for it but to shrug the
shoulders and give up hope. What can you make of
these twin cities of the Texan range one a town of
tough cowmen with a taste for fifty-year-old, senti
mental stories for schoolgirls, and the other a town of
insurance brokers with a passion for the serious drama ?
What a Continent!

And I did not feel the faintest twinge of surprise
for I had long since been benumbed into a state of
mind in which surprise at anything was impossible
when I travelled along the road that links these Texan
twins and saw that the only two things of interest on
the road were the racecourse on Arlington Downs
and a Goldfish Farm.

The huge air-port at Dallas was crowded with aero
planes. In the hangars there were swarms of little
biplanes, some painted black and yellow in stripes, like
wasps, and some bright scarlet so that they looked like
Richthofen s squadron, but on the field itself there
were rows of great silver monoplanes, Douglas and
Boeing machines, roaring away as their engines were
being warmed up for action. They were all private

244 A VISIT TO AMERICA

machines, belonging to oil-magnates who were holding
a Conference that very morning in Dallas, and they
were a great deal more beautiful than their owners,
whom I saw later on at luncheon in the hotel.

That luncheon, attended by hundreds of oil-mag
nates with their attendant sub-magnates, secretaries,
advisers, and politicians, put the last nail into the cof
fin of Texas. Gone forever is my boyhood vision. The
derrick has taken the place of the bronco-buster, the
legal injunction the place of the six-shooter, and the
pasty, flabby-jowled expanse of slab-like countenance
of the oil-magnate reigns where once were only lean
and sun-tanned faces, blue-eyed, stern, yet with a ready
smile.

Yet even in that exhibition of human codfish lurked
something of the American fantasy. That is one of
the never-ending charms of the place. You never know
when something utterly absurd may not follow in
stantly on something utterly magnificent, and vice
versa. Round every corner there may be a Wonder of
the World, or a crime, or a rather bad joke, or an ideal,
or a dump of rusty cans. You cannot tell which it is
going to be. Of only one thing can you be certain,
that round every corner you will find something. There
is no such thing in America as a complete blank, except
perhaps in women s clubs.

Consider the aspect of the American fantasy. You
may recall that I had come to Dallas direct from Cali
fornia (and if you do not recall it, you must be the
most slipshod reader in existence). Now in Califor-

A VISIT TO AMERICA 245

nia the name of the gentleman who had guaranteed
to produce Utopia out of a ballot-box, provided that it
was sufficiently full of pro-Utopian votes, had been
blazoned on billboards, splashed in newspaper adver
tisements, placarded on handbills all over the State.
In California you could hardly walk fifty yards with
out seeing his name.

With only the brief interval of that day s transit
across Arizona, I had now come to a State where a
name was also blazoned on billboards, splashed in
newspaper advertisements, placarded on handbills all
over the State. In Texas you could hardly walk fifty
yards without seeing the name. The name on the Cali-
fornian billboards stood for the downfall of the Capi
talist system. The name on the Texan billboards stood
for the triumph of the Capitalist system. The one rep
resented the assault on vested interests, the other repre
sented the apotheosis of vested interests. The one was
the spearhead of the attack on Rugged Individualism,
the other a shield for the defence. The one cried,
"Share the wealth"; the other cried, "Give me the
wealth." The one cried, "Give me the power and I ll
give you Utopia"; the other thought, "I have the
power and so I have Utopia." And the names were
the same.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

"A Kentucky corn-field, the tall, graceful, long-leav d corn, slender, flap
ping, bright green, with tassels, with beautiful ears each well-
sheath d in its husk."

WALT WHITMAN.

I PAID a short a far too short visit to Louisville, Ken
tucky, which I reached by way of Memphis and Nash
ville. To describe the former would lead me into the
trap of trying to describe the Mississippi River, into
neither of which I would care to fall, while the outline
of the latter is etched by my encyclopaedia with a mas
terly conciseness that it would be folly to try to emu
late. "Nashville is a handsome, well built town, with
an imposing capitol of limestone, a penitentiary, and
a large lunatic asylum." I travelled across Tennessee,
through woods that were denser, higher, and more
magnificently gorgeous than any I had yet seen, where
the leaves of the ten thousand oak-trees were almost
purple in their richness, where few evergreens marred
the Cavalier splendour with their Quakerish sobriety,
and where no derricks reared their heads, in a train
called the Pan American, that modestly describes itself
as "One of the World s Most Popular Trains."
Whether or not its claim was well founded I am in
clined to doubt the existence of a reliable means of

246

A VISIT TO AMERICA 247

checking it it certainly was one of the World s Short
est Trains, for it consisted of one coach, one sleeping-
car, and one dining-car, and that was all.

My stay in Louisville was the climax of the long
whirl round the country. I danced, dined, lunched,
played golf, and visited the famous Blue Grass coun
try. The two remarkable things about the Blue Grass
are firstly that the grass is green at least it was when
I saw it and secondly that the numerous stud-farms
in the district are the proud possessors of no fewer than
a hundred and forty that may not be the exact figure
two-year-olds which are all absolutely certain to win
next year s Kentucky Derby. I know, because I saw
them all. I also saw the previous winners of about two
hundred and sixty Kentucky Derbys and admired the
fluency with which the groom in charge of each hero
reeled off its number of victories, the amount of prize
money it won* during its career down to the nearest
nickel, and the list of its most important progeny. The
champion of all, a horse called Man o War, had such
an imposing figure in the third of these categories that
I wanted to ask how he had found the leisure during
his career to acquire anything at all in the first two
categories, but I refrained. After all, every walk of life
has its Eleusinian Mysteries, or, to use a more homely
paraphrase, its trade secrets.

But this is not the place to describe the fleeting hours
spent among those peaceful green fields, so like Eng
land in their freshness and their lanes and their hedge
rows, nor the glimpse of home-life in a southern fam-

248 A VISIT TO AMERICA

ily, as serene and beautiful as the Ohio River which
drifted silently along beneath my bedroom window,
nor the savour of Kentucky cooking, nor the mellow
richness of Kentucky whisky. It is not even the place
to talk of the beauty of the Kentucky ladies whom I
had the honour of meeting at a ball in the Pendennis
Club. To none of these can justice be done, even re
motely, after a wild, whirling visit of four days. For
that I must wait till I go back to the South and travel
through it from end to end. And may that be soon.
Here it must simply be recorded that after four days
of southern hospitality and southern laughter and
southern gaiety, I departed for New York, leaving be
hind me a Louisville that was practically a heap of
tottering ruins.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

"To get betimes in Boston town I rose this morning early,
Here s a good place at the corner, I must stand and see the show."

WALT WHITMAN.

IT was with a profound diffidence that I approached
the city of Boston, partly because of its almost legend
ary reputation all over the world as the home of a vast
Moral Superiority, as the place in which certain old
families will only speak to each other, and, higher still,
one old family that will only maintain a conversation
with Jehovah himself,, and partly because a distin
guished English author, only a week before my visit,
had publicly announced that Boston is a "city of bogus
culture." Naturally the Press of the United States had
accepted this challenge and splashed the news in great
headlines from Coast to Coast, the Bostonian news
papers treating the words with aggrieved protest, the
remainder with the whoops of joy that street raga
muffins let loose when they see a top hat dislodged
from a dignified and high brow by a snowball. Inci
dentally these insults, flung about with such lordly
abandon by English travellers, do not really assist the
work of the English Speaking Union in bringing the
United States and Great Britain nearer to each other.
A few days visit, a hasty glance, perhaps a cocktail or

249

250 A VISIT TO AMERICA

two in excess of what the liver will stand, and then a
sweeping generalization, and an unpleasant taste is
left behind that may take a long time to eradicate.

Fortunately for me, Boston seemed to be standing
up pretty well against this ill-tempered attack by one
of its guests, and its reprisal was as neat as it was good-
humoured. And this was just as well for me, for it
was on my head, as the nearest Briton within range,
that it fell.

On the first morning of my visit, I was taken in
solemn style to see the place beside the old Court-
House where the brutal English soldiery shot down in
cold blood the unarmed American patriots in 1770. A
tablet on the wall marks the spot, and the Lion and
the Unicorn, captives of the triumphant Republicans,
are compelled by their captors to gaze down for ever
from the top of the Court-House on the scene of the
Monarchical blunder. Poor Lion and poor Unicorn!
They put the best face upon it that they can, and take
as much pains to look beautiful as ever they did; but,
however dignified they look, however lovely in their
mellowed stone, they cannot hide the melancholy fact
that there is no crown left to fight for, and that there
has been no reason for nearly two hundred years in
Boston for the Lion to beat the Unicorn all round the
town.

After I had assimilated this page in our annals of
Empire I was bundled into an automobile and driven
out through New England, past exquisite old Colonial
farm-houses and through green fields and quiet woods

A VISIT TO AMERICA 251

to the village of Lexington. There, in a little English
hamlet, scattered English-wise round an English vil
lage-green, stands the monument to the first shots that
were fired in the American War of Independence.
Rightly does the inscription claim that those shots
were heard all round the world, and even for a citizen
of the defeated side that village-green is a deeply mov
ing place. On the wall of one little house is a tablet
recording that Jonathan Harrington, desperately
wounded in the skirmish, struggled thither from the
green and died at his wife s feet. From the handful
of Jonathan Harrington s companions, from that little
patch of grass, from that elm-shaded cluster of white
Colonial cottages, came the colossal Republic of which,
by weeks and weeks of steady travelling, I had con
trived to see a small part, and the echo of those shots
did not die away entirely until their sound was lost
it must be for ever in that other, bigger fusillade, in
which the descendants of the English soldiery and of
the Lexington farmers stood side by side with the
descendants of the men of Lafayette.

From Lexington we went on to Concord, through
country of which almost every yard was full of history.
Here was a house that had served as the headquarters
of an English commander, Earl Percy; yonder, a
house at which Paul Revere would unquestionably have
halted for a drink, if Paul Revere had chanced to pass
that way upon his immortal ride, which unfortunately
he omitted to do; and across the fields was the route
by which the Royal Troops made their march; and

252 A VISIT TO AMERICA

one road to this day is called the Percy Road. And so
it was until we came to the little stone bridge in the
marshy, reed-filled water-meadows where the brutal
English soldiery ran away from the practically un
armed American patriots and so started the ball rolling
of the legend that one American farmer with a scythe
is worth six English soldiers armed to the teeth with
guns and bayonets. I sometimes wonder if the ball has
stopped rolling yet. But by this time I was ready to cry
"Pax." It seemed as if every turn in the road might
bring us to a new monument of British brutality or
British humiliation. The landscape seemed, to an
imagination that was by now disordered by shame and
unhappiness, to be covered with ghostly mercenaries,
gross, repulsive, cowardly men, running for their lives
from sturdy, honest New England rustics., clear-eyed,
clean-limbed, and gallant.

Boston s culture was avenged, and another victory
over the Mother Country recorded in the pleasant
fields of Massachusetts. I cried "Camarade," and was
allowed time out to visit the graveyard on the hill
which looks down upon the village and across to the
river and the parsonage where Emerson s father was
parson.

I found exactly what I had expected to find a price
less chapter in America s history being allowed to
crumble into dust. The tombstones in historic Con
cord s graveyard are utterly neglected. The lettering
is worn, the stones are covered with gnawing fungus,
the grass is growing higher and higher. But nobody

A VISIT TO AMERICA 253

cares. In a short hour I collected several perfect exam
ples of eighteenth century funerary inscriptions. Who
knows what jewels are still waiting many of them
have got tired of waiting and have joined the shades
for a passer-by who has a taste for such things, a
note-book and pencil, and a whole week to spare.

Could anything be more lovely, for instance, than
this, carved upon a large headstone that stood out by
its glittering whiteness among its dingier neighbours ?

"This stone is designed by its Durability to perpet
uate the memory and by its colour to signify the moral
character of Miss Abigail Dudley who died on the
fourth of July, 1812, aged 73 years."

Consider also Captain Jonathan Butterick, who was
"grave and not double-tongued," and who, when he
died in 1757, was "followed to his grave by an aged
widow and thirteen well-instructed children."

And was there ever a more perfect tribute paid by
a husband to a dead wife than the stone which is
sacred to the memory of "Mrs. Rebekah Clark (Com
fort of Mr. Benjamin Clark) who died March y e iAth
1788"?

The Christian names of these stern old New Eng
land Puritans would make a study in themselves. The
best pair which I found in the Concord graveyard were
Major Abishai Brown and his wife Jerusha. But in a
year or two the stones will have crumbled, and the only
memory of Abishai and Jerusha and their daughter
Dorcas will be in these pages.

Really the Americans, for all their devastating

254 A VIS I T T0 AMERICA

charm, can be very irritating. There is less excuse here
than in sleepy, Spanish Monterey for the callous neg
lect of the past. Is there not an archaeological society
at the mighty University of Harvard which would
make excursions on summer evenings to these forgot
ten graveyards of New England and copy out the
inscriptions and recut the worn lettering just as Walter
Scott s Old Mortality used to do? If there is no such
archaeological society at Harvard, or among the citizens
of Boston itself, then it is high time that one was
formed. And if there is neither such a society, nor
chance or intention of forming one, then perhaps I
suffered unjustly, after all, for the strictures of that
distinguished English writer.

It was my intention when composing this book not
to mention any of my hosts and hostesses either by
name or by identifiable implications, partly because
they might not like it, but mainly because there were
so many of them and their kindness was so uniformly
generous that it would be impossible for sheer lack of
space to speak of them all and churlish to speak of
some and omit others. So I decided not to speak of
any. But in Boston I must break the rule and allow
one exception.

I had always been under the impression that, either
as an eye-witness at the time, or as a listener, through
a long period of subsequent years, I was acquainted
with most of the really sensational varieties of escape

A VISIT TO AMERICA 255

from sudden death in the World War of 1914-1918.
But all were capped, and easily capped, by the
escape of my Boston host, Mr. Gardiner Fiske, late of
the American Flying Service. Mr. Fiske was observer
in a two-seater aeroplane engaged in a mass-combat
over the German lines. Noticing that a German aero
plane was about to attack him from behind, he swung
his machine-gun round, backwards and upwards, to
engage the enemy. Unfortunately the gun came adrift
from its moorings and flew out of the cockpit, gun,
ammunition-belt, Mr. Fiske and all. Gun and belt
dropped to earth. Mr. Fiske flew solitarily through the
air and hit the tail of the aeroplane and came to the
sudden and discomforting consciousness that he was
clinging to the fabric with his hands, with nothing but
ten thousand feet of French air between him and
French soil. Preferring, therefore, the insubstantial
fabric to the very substantial drop, Mr. Fiske hoisted
himself, while moving at one hundred and fifty miles
per hour, on to the fuselage and then crawled back
on all fours along the top of the fuselage and finally
dropped headfirst into his cockpit. It so happened
that the observer in the next aeroplane they were
fighting in flight formation saw the entire episode
and, being an amateur artist of distinction, has recorded
the whole astounding episode in a series of black-and-
white drawings of the various stages of Mr. Fiske s
short but stirring odyssey alone and unattached in the
upper air.

256 A VISIT TO AMERICA

A curious thing about Boston is the reluctance of
the Bostonian to allow the stranger to stroll by himself
in the city. Whenever I suggested to any of my friends
that I should spend a morning on a solitary ramble, an
ominous silence fell and a general awkwardness de
scended. I never discovered the reason. Perhaps it is
an unwritten tradition of Bostonian hospitality that
every minute of a guest s day must be filled in for him.
Or is it possible that, as in Soviet Russia, there are cer
tain well-established tourist-routes along which a visitor
should be courteously but firmly propelled,, but beyond
the limits of which lurk unnamable horrors? Is it
conceivable, I asked myself, as I snatched a couple of
minutes from the social whirl and gazed out of my
window over the Charles River, is it conceivable that
this beautiful old city is a facade behind which voodoo-
celebrations, cannibal feasts, medicine-dances, slave-
raids, Inquisitionary tortures, and monstrosities of
Satanic worship are celebrated in public a few yards
from the regular tourist-routes ? Somehow I could not
believe it. And yet what other explanation was pos
sible of this hermetical sealing, like Mecca, Lhasa, and
Timbuctoo, against the foreigner? Why was I not al
lowed to drift through the streets in search of adven
ture? It could not be to prevent me from catching a
glimpse of that revolting apartment-house which is
dressed up to look like a mediaeval German castle, be
cause I could see it from my window. It could not be
that Bostonians have no beautiful buildings to be
proud of, for they have hundreds. The problem is at

A VISIT TO AMERICA 257

present unsolved. But it is one which ought to be
solved in the interests of Sociology, and I commend it,
as an exercise in practical research, to those young
gentlemen who are studying Sociology at the Univers
ity of Yale.

But if solitary excursions were banned there were
no lack of conducted tours. I visited Harvard and saw
the two examples of what a millionaire can do to a
University the Harkness additions, designed to har
monize with the beautiful seventeenth century brick
work of the original buildings, and the Widener
Library which squats in the middle of it all like a vast,
bloated, panting frog with a Greek face.

I went to Fenway Court and saw the Vermeer, one
of the supreme pictures of the world, which is placed
immediately above a tray of inferior silver ornaments,
so that the sunlight reflects the dazzle of the silver on
to the surface of the picture, and you find it almost
impossible to see the latter and quite impossible to miss
the former.

I saw the succession of streets which are named, in
the city where Samuel Adams orated and the tea was
thrown overboard, after the greatest of England s aris
tocratic houses, and went round the Museum and in
spected the innumerable engravings and paintings of
the Church of St. Botolph s in Lincolnshire, the spire
of which is Boston Stump, and I came away in the end
with two pictures in my mind. One picture was of
those, I trust, imaginary scenes of crime and horror
that are too hideous for the eye of mortal stranger to

258 A VISIT TO AMERICA

rest upon, the other was of quiet, reserved, eighteenth
century squares and streets of residential houses, which,
if Bath had been made of dark brick or Boston of
creamy stone, might have come straight from that
West-English masterpiece of eighteenth century resi
dential architecture. On the whole I preferred the sec
ond, or less exciting, of the two pictures.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I have ofFer d my style to every one, I have journcy d with confident step;
While my pleasure is yet at the full I whisper So long!"

WALT WHITMAN.

THE sands were running out. In fact, everything was
running out. My time, my store of dollars, my good
health, all were rapidly coming to an end when I re
turned from Boston for one last look round New York
before sailing. Those last days were the most difficult
of all in many ways. There was so much still to do,
so many people still to be seen, so many hosts and
hostesses to be thanked for their illimitable kindness.
And, on top of all this, the whole of Manhattan Island
seemed to be awake to the hideous possibility that a
British author was likely to escape from America with
out delirium tremens, nervous breakdown, cirrhosis of
the liver, paralysis of the brain, insomnia, or the stag
gers. Manhattan sprang to arms with a howl of rage.
Such a catastrophe was not to be endured. And, to
make the ignominy the more acute, this fearful disas
ter was likely to occur, not after the usual three or four
weeks which is all that is required to get the British
author down, but after more than three months. For
ninety days and ninety nights, with the exception of a
dozen or so spent in the safe obscurity of Pullman-cars,

259

260 A VISIT TO AMERICA

the assault had continued unavailingly. Perhaps,
thought Manhattan Island, we took it too much for
granted. Perhaps we thought that we had so much
time at our disposal that the thing was a foregone
conclusion. Perhaps we have been half-hearted.
Whether that be the case or not, there was nothing
half-hearted about the onslaught of those last few
days. I was seldom allowed to go to bed at all, and
practically the only sleep I got was a few winks in Mr.
Isidore Grunbaum s taxi-cab (I hired it and him for
the whole period; it saved at least five minutes a day
which I would otherwise have spent in getting cabs)
while driving from one party to another. It was an
epic encounter, and one that deserves a volume to
itself, how I fought single-handed against the greatest
city of the New World. The result, as you shall see,
was in the balance up to the last beating of the gong
on the S. S. Washington, and the last cries of the
stewards warning passengers friends to go ashore.

One morning I found myself, oddly enough, with a
couple of hours to spare. A party had broken up at
about seven o clock in the morning, and I was not due
at my next engagement until nine o clock, and as I was
sauntering homewards and wondering how best to fill
in the time, I suddenly remembered that I had a stand
ing invitation to visit the famous Line-Up at the Police
Headquarters in Centre Street. A taxi, with a facetious
driver who commiserated with me on my unhappy

A VISIT TO AMERICA 261

plight, and added that I seemed such a respectable,
well-dressed fellow to be in trouble with the cops, and
wound up with the philosophic reflection that it was
the same old story and that foreign criminals were the
curse of the States, deposited me at the grim build
ing, and my card to the Police-lieutenant obtained me
instant admission.

It was an illuminating experience in one way, and
completely baffling in another. Every foreigner, espe
cially one from Great Britain, ought to be compelled
to visit the Line-Up, in order to get the same illumina
tion as I did. Every American ought to be compelled
to visit it, in order to get rid of the fundamental cause
of the bafflement.

I will try to explain what I mean.

I sat in the auditorium of a large room that is shaped
almost like a theatre, among a couple of hundred de
tectives, and watched the arrested men parade one by
one in front of the microphone and under the brilliant
limelight. A more dreadful collection of scoundrels I
never saw in my life. The prisoners in the Chicago
police-court were dregs of humanity because, in the
main, their brains were subhuman. They were ape-
men whose crimes were almost the crimes of lunatics.
But these men in the Centre Street Line-Up were not
lunatics. Their brains were not subhuman. Far from
it. The bank-robbers, the hold-up men, the machine-
gun desperadoes who held in their turn the centre of
the stage, were more dangerous than any ape-man.
They were clever men turned utterly ruthless, and they

262 A VISIT TO AMERICA

looked absolutely terrifying. Although I was sur
rounded by armed detectives, in the Headquarters of
the New York Police, nevertheless it was difficult not
to shiver when some of those implacable, deadly eyes
happened to turn my way. Their criminal records, so
far as they were known, were read out, grim catalogues
of cold-blooded murders, of savage beatings, of merci
less blackmail, of the kidnapping of babies, of the
bombing of harmless tradesmen. They were all young
men, and some of them were handsome, like snakes,
and almost all were well-dressed. The badly dressed
ones were the small fry of crime, pickpockets, sand-
baggers and petty larcenists.

Now we come to the point where I got such an
eye-opener. At least half of those deadly killers were
Italians. Some of them were first generation Italians,
men who had been born in Italy, almost always south
ern Italy or Sicily, and had come to America during
the boom years after the war; and the rest were sec
ond or third generation Italians. Next in numbers
after the Italians came mixed Slavonic blood, and after
them came negroes, then Germans, and finally Ameri
cans of the Anglo-Saxon stock.

From this it would appear that when we Europeans
talk of American crime and its prevalence, it would
be a great deal fairer to talk about European crime in
America, or fairer still, European and African crime in
America. The post-war slump in Europe caused by the
war, and the post-war boom in America caused by the
war, combined to attract the -cut-throats of the one

A VISIT TO AMERICA 263

continent to the throats, so to speak, of the other. And
then we get up proudly and say, "What a wicked peo
ple the Americans must be compared with us!"

Especially are we fond of making that statement in
Great Britain, and especially are we fond of comparing
our crime statistics with those of the United States.
But the Line-Up convinced me more than ever not
indeed that I wanted any more convincing that a
major cause why Great Britain so often misunder
stands the United States, lies in this matter of com
parison. The British will insist upon comparing the
United States to this country or that, Y?hen the only
true perspective is to be gained by comparing it to
this continent or that. There is no more real sense in
saying, "The Americans are more wicked than the
British because Italians commit a great many crimes
in America," than there would be in saying, "The
British are more wicked than the Americans because
Italians commit a great many crimes in Naples.*

But the moment you compare the United States to
Europe, the picture falls into its perspective at once.
There is lawlessness in the one just as there is lawless
ness in the other, and a murderer may find a hiding-
place in the Ozarks as easily as in the Albanian moun
tains. And it is significant that, whereas John Dil-
linger appeared in European eyes to be simply another
transatlantic desperado in the long succession from the
days of the Wild West, to American eyes he was a por
tent, something of a phenomenon. For Dillinger came
of an old-established Anglo-Saxon Quaker family, and

264 A VISIT TO AMERICA

was neither dago, wop, nor bohunk, nor of any other
imported brand of villainy.

So much for the illumination. Now for the baf
flement.

As I watched thug after thug, killer after killer, take
his stand in front of us, I could not help feeling that
I had seen them all before. And so I had, to all intents
and purposes, for they were just the same as the photo
graphs, which I had seen every day in the newspapers
or in the post-offices, of notorious criminals. And yet,
simply on the strength of these photographs and of
the subconscious notion that those men are lineal
descendants of Robin Hood, the soft-hearted American
public lashes itself into a perfect frenzy of slobbery,
weeping sentimentality. The soft-hearted American
public does not pause to shed a soft-hearted tear for
the old men shot in the stomach by the bandit, or for
gallant policemen mown down in a black ambush, or
for mothers whose babies are taken and killed by kid
nappers. All its soft-heartedness is reserved for the
thug. He is regarded as a hero, a figure of romance,
and probably as a grand example of Rugged Indi
vidualism, and so, by a staggering caprice of inverted
reasoning, as an American of whom America ought to
be proud. The first sign that a degenerate, dope-mad
dened, inhuman killer is about to be raised by public
opinion pretty nearly to the level of Joan of Arc or St.
Francis of Assisi, is when he gets a nickname. Thus
Charles Floyd, thief, drug-peddler, bank-robber, and
murderer a dozen times over, was christened "Pretty

A VISIT TO AMERICA 265

Boy," and a wave of sympathy for the dear charming
fellow swept the country. The photograph of "Pretty
Boy" lies before me as I write. He was a man of thirty-
one (a Belgian by birth, incidentally) with a square
face, a broad flat nose, a sulky expression in his narrow
eyes, a cruel mouth, and a fat face. But the American
public could find something pretty and something boy
ish in that. In the same way an ugly young murderer
with a flabby, pasty face, named George Nelson, is
hoisted into a niche beside the heroes of the nation
under the name of "Baby-Face."

Another newspaper lies before me. It contains the
picture of a fat, oily, smartly dressed youth who was
serving a life sentence for the murder of two police
men in Oklahoma. On Thanksgiving Day he was
given six days leave of absence to shoot quail in the
mountains. The prison authorities furnished the sweet
lad with a shotgun and plenty of cartridges, and then
were dreadfully vexed and hurt when he did not re
turn at the end of his six days. So far as I know he
has not returned yet, and, at a reasonable estimate, it
will cost the lives of five or six brave men before he
does.

Thug after thug came past on the stage, and my
horror deepened as I looked at them. But why, why
should the American public sympathize with them?
Why is the American public not whole-heartedly on
the side of law and order, as the British public is? Our
police are no more skillful than the American police,
and certainly have not one-twentieth of the difficulties

266 A VISIT TO AMERICA

to face nor one-thousandth of the dangers to run, but
they get fifty times more successful results. And why ?
Simply because an overwhelming majority of the citi
zens is on the side of the police and an enemy of thug-
dom. My mind instinctively went back to the Utah
Hotel in Salt Lake City and my young Republican
friend with his burning, Crusading zeal and his flood
of sincerity and eloquence. ... A ruling class . . .
civic responsibilities . . . public servants . . . integrity
in public life . . . Republican duty . . . corporate
opinion and thence it went to Montana and the
memorial to James Williams, the Captain of the Vigi
lantes, "through whose untiring efforts and intrepid
daring Law and Order were established in Montana,"
and I wondered if the two spirits could not be brought
together, the spirit of the Republican Crusaders and
the spirit of James Williams, so that a new, continent-
wide band of Vigilantes might arise . . . untiring
. . . intrepid . . . daring ... to exterminate the mur
derer and the racketeer, to remove the unjust judge and
the paroling Governor, to deal with corruption and
graft, just as James Williams and his Vigilantes dealt
with men like Sheriff Henry Plummer and George Ives
and Buck Stinson and Bob Zackary. It is no business of
mine. But all the same, I think the American public
ought to be compelled to attend the Line-Up.

A few last engagements remained to be fulfilled
before the farewell began, and one of them provided

A VISIT TO AMERICA 267

a remarkable experience. A lady had written to me
some weeks before, explaining that she was the organ
izer of a Literary Luncheon, explaining furthermore
that a Literary Luncheon consisted of a luncheon
which I had surmised attended by three or four hun
dred ladies and gentlemen of immense culture which
I doubted whose one ambition in life was to listen to
a speech by me. After I had declined the invitation,
the lady-organizer bombarded me with a perfect tir de
rafale, or drum-fire, of letters, telephone-calls and tele
grams, begging, pleading, cajoling, practically going
down on her knees. The Literary Luncheon, it ap
peared, was steadily becoming frantic with suspense.
Indeed, it was pretty clear that, unless I agreed to make
a speech to them, not only would the whole Literary
Luncheon movement receive a setback that would
practically amount to a death-blow, but the individual
luncheoners would never fully recover from their cha
grin and disappointment. Never before had they looked
forward to hearing anyone speak as they were looking
forward to hearing me. The date would be a red-letter
day in the long and honourable annals of American
Culture, and its memory would be for ever enshrined
in the hearts of New York s most enlightened citizens.
In this lyrical strain the lady-organizer couched her
appeals, and in the end I cancelled a very attractive
engagement and agreed to deliver a harangue. A loud
paean of thanksgiving instantly rocked the welkin in
Literary and Lunching circles when the news got
round, and the jubilation was, according to the lady-

268 A VISIT TO AMERICA

organizer, so unparalleled that I took a good deal of
trouble over the preparation of my speech. I felt that
it was the least I could do.

There were about three hundred people in the
room. The steam-heating was in full blast and the
room was very stuffy. The food was execrable. There
was nothing to drink. And when I arrived the lady-
organizer (who reminded me very strongly of Miss
E. M. Delafield s delicious creation, Miss Katherine
Ellen Blatt, in her "Provincial Lady in America") in
formed me with perfect sangfroid, with the blandest
nonchalance, and without the faintest batting of an
eyelid, that the principal speaker was dear Mr. Bev-
erley Nichols, that I was sixth speaker on the list,
and would I be kind enough to condense what I had
to say into an absolute limit of four minutes, and of
course if I could make it shorter so much the better.
In the end I was relegated to seventh place as the
speaker who was scheduled for Number seven was
rather important and was in a hurry to get away and
so was promoted in the list. My turn came on at a
quarter past three and the hot-house, in which we were
by this time gasping, was rapidly emptying. I spoke
for two minutes and twenty-five seconds and the lady-
organizer interrupted me four times.

Life is full of ups and downs, especially in the
United States. Within a few hours I had almost for
gotten the villainous Literary Luncheon and was bask
ing in the conversation of Mr. Christopher Morley.
We strolled at our ease through Manhattan and loafed

A VISIT TO AMERICA 269

across Brooklyn Bridge to look at the house in which
"Leaves of Grass" first saw the light. I need hardly
add, at this stage of this book, that this historical monu
ment of one of America s greatest writers is utterly
neglected. It is true that there is a bronze tablet of
singular ugliness on the wall in commemoration of
the building s great distinction, but there is no attempt
to preserve the structure. When I saw it, the house
was disused, and boards were nailed across the cob
webby windows. By this time it may have vanished
altogether. Thence we wandered back over the bridge
and called on Mr. Isaac Mendoza, most delightful
of booksellers, bearing the wisdom of his seventy
years under an exterior of about forty, and talked
for hours in his narrow-fronted little bookshop in Ann
Street, and then the three of us dined at Andre s res
taurant in Frankfort Street where the Oyster Pot Pie
almost brings tears of emotion to the eyes, and every
menu begins with the immortal words, "Le vin dissipe
la tristesse et rejouit le coeur," and Literary Luncheons
and lady-organizers fade into nothingness.

Mr. Morley and I pursued our Whitman pilgrimage
out to Long Island on the next day and visited the
little farmhouse where he was born. By some odd
chance, the farmhouse is not tumbling down into ruin.
On the other hand there is no commemorative tablet
nor any other outward sign of its historic interest.
Perhaps American public opinion feels that by not ac
tually destroying the birthplace of the poet it has done
enough for posterity. This is the last reference which

270 A VISIT TO AMERICA

I shall make to the American enigma. But it ought
to be placed on record that if each citizen of the
United States who, during my visit to their country,
made some reference in conversation with me to the
deplorable lack of historical antiquities in America,
were to contribute the sum of one dollar for each ref
erence, a fund would be raised that would be sufficient
to save the Walt Whitman house at the end of Brook
lyn Bridge, to save the General Castro house and the
Spanish Bear-Pit at Monterey, to remove the stucco
renovations from the oldest house in San Francisco,
to recut the tombstones in the graveyards of the Trin
ity Church at the end of Wall Street and in Concord,
Massachusetts, to destroy the pre-fire water-tower in
Chicago, to repair the crumbling roof of the Church
of the Mission of San Miguel Arcangel, and that there
would still be enough left over to finance the removal
of the Elevated from Third Avenue.

The winds of winter were screaming icily round our
ears as we came back from the Whitman house, past
Louis Quinze chateaux and Louis Quatorze chateaux,
and, here and there, a strikingly original departure in
the form of a Louis Treize chateau, past the aviation
field from which Colonel Lindbergh took off for his
flight to Europe, in the days when he was not a world-
hero but just a Lone Fool. And, incidentally, if the
fund for the removal of the Elevated from Third Ave
nue was increased by a dollar from each American
man, woman, and child who honestly believe that
Colonel Lindbergh was the first airman to fly the At-

A VISIT TO AMERICA 271

lantic, it would be large enough to pay off the National
Debt. At Roslyn, we stopped at the Post Office and
Mr. Morley showed me a bulletin from the Depart
ment of Justice appealing for help in tracking down
a murderous desperado named Robert Mais. The
usual photograph and description was supplemented
by an extra piece of information that must have been
of great help to amateur trackers. For Mr. Mais had
been indiscreet enough, in earlier life, to have his right
forearm tattooed with a Heart pierced by an Arrow,
with the single word over it "Mother," and the De
partment of Justice appealed to every right-minded
citizen to report to the police the whereabouts of any
murderer that was thus adorned.

As I opened my newspaper next morning at break
fast, two photographs shot out at me simultaneously.
The first announced that Mr. Henry Ford was con
templating the demolition, transportation to America,
and subsequent re-erection, of Bull s Cottage, in Bore-
ham, Essex, the cottage in which Ann Boleyn lived
while Henry VIII was courting her in the early fifteen
hundreds. Mr. Ford had bought the whole Boreham
estate, and presumably felt that one Henry ought to
get his money s worth as well as another. The second
paragraph announced the imminent destruction, with
out re-erection, of the colonial Fountain House on
Staten Island that was at one time the headquarters
of the British army during the War of Independence,

272 A VISIT TO AMERICA

and the house of Margaret Moncrieffe, who was in
love with Aaron Burr.

I made one last dash out of New York City, to the
town of Paterson, New Jersey.

It is a manufacturing town, full of silk-factories, and
Italian strikers, and Jews working away in little side-
streets and undercutting prices, and small, shabby
houses, and a jostling, crowded Main Street. But there
was one beautiful thing I saw in the "Lyons of
America" the like of which I saw nowhere else, and
that was the Falls of the Passaic River, almost in the
middle of the town, frozen hard and glittering in the
afternoon sun of winter with a sort of creamy colour
where the foam had been struck into stillness by the
frost. It was as if Nature had said, with a sardonic
wink, "See what I can do with my Falls in the night.
All you can do with them in a century is to make
Paterson."

I did my round of farewells and slipped unostenta
tiously down to the Quay.

I was still alive and that was more than I had any
right to expect. But one more party, I felt, might just
be the one more which would snatch victory for the
United States out of the jaws of defeat. One more
party, and I would be laid to rest in one of those open
spaces in Queens.

A VISIT TO AMERICA 273

So I crept down to the steamship Washington with
out a word to a soul, and tiptoed silently to my cabin.
Once inside my cabin, with the door locked and bolted,
I should be safe. I reached it unobserved and darted
in. It was full of friends who had come to see me off,
and a bottle was whizzing round from hand to hand.

But there is an end to everything and the liner left
at last. I went up to the deck and looked back at Man
hattan. Far in the distance the spidery lines of the
George Washington Bridge were faintly visible in the
haze, and the Downtown skyscrapers shone in the
bright wintry sun, each wearing its white panache of
steam. The giant steamships lay snugly in their berths
and the little boats of the Squeedunk Railroad bustled
importantly past. The gulls cried round us and the
enchanted outline faded.

That night I could not sleep. A strong wind had
arisen, and I stood for hours in the darkness on r the
sun-deck, and listened to the wind and the rush of
water round the bows of the liner, and looked out
across the seas and thought of all I had seen and done
in America. And most of all I thought of the friends
I had made, friends that I know I will never lose,
and of the gay and happy people I had seen, and of
the immensity of America, and of the unquenchable
spirit of the Pioneers that still lives on and always will
live on.

And I thought of the sun shining upon Chesapeake
Bay, and of the blueness of the mountains of Montana,
and of the cottonwoods on the Elkhorn River, and of

274 A VISIT TO AMERICA

the crusading fire of the Young Republicans, and of
the yellow elm-leaves drifting slowly down in Liberty
Park in Salt Lake City, and of the Carroll House, and
of the village-green at Lexington, and of Monterey,
and of the steamer for Rarotonga going out through
the Golden Gate into the Pacific.

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